I've been looking for the bits to make a new forge for a while but, without spending a fortune, nothing appeared. A farmer friend of mine happened to mention that a not particularly community minded gentleman, not the exact words, but explained to me in proper old devonian, had deposited an unwanted bit of scrap in one of his hedges!
I was now the proud owner of an old and abused, and definitely defunct, clarke compressor!
Once I got it home, I stripped off all the extraneous stuff and was left with this.
Welded some legs on it,
Added 50mm of Kaowool and an inlet for the burner,
Welded the front back on with an access hole cut, and installed a burner,
Sprayed the inside with rigidizer, plaxed some home made firebricks in the base, waited for the rigidizer to dry and fired it up!
The door is lined internally with fireclay and swings shut to retain the heat. It doesn't fit the access hole, but has a fair sized gap around the outside to allow the forge to breath. I would it up to 40 bar and my thermocouple went off the scale. Further evidence that it gets plenty hot enough was the melted section of EN45 that I left in the forge just a bit too long!
I think it would benefit from two smaller burners rather than the one its got, so, once the world recovers from Christmas, I think I'll build a couple of Amal based burners which timgunn referred to in an earlier thread.
On the whole I'm well pleased with the end result. What do you think, guys?