Charles R. Stevens

I realize that their is a language barrier, and Google translate is iffy and literal. I will try to explain. pure clay will work, just damp and rammed in place, it will vitrify. Clay can be cut with sand buy about 1/3 and still vitrify like pottery. simpler is to use an adobe soil or mix. Adobe can be from 10-33%clay, 50-66% sand and the remainder silt. Simply put non organic soil in a jar, say 1/3-1/2 full and fill with water and shake. Let sit until until it settles. Sand will be on the bottom, silt in the middle and clay on top. Pretty much anything will work but can be adjusted closer to ideal. With adobe one can make brick or cob, one may mix chopped straw or cow/horse manure , sometimes the liquid from cooked cactus or cooked wheat flour paste (gravy) to make up for low to poor clay and high silt levels. A good dose 10% or so of wood or coal ash will help stabilize and shed slag. Adobe will still partly vitrify but will not be as water/erosion resistant and high clay, low silt mixes. this “ideal” but not needed, any mineral soil will work, tho more or less maintenance may be needed and the ash formed in working generally acts as a flux to keep slag from sticking to bad.

No it isn’t, pure clay or clay/silt is fine. Simply put, think adobe brick.

As can adjustable bands. I bend one end over double, drill and then 90. The other end I move back from the end and double the taking the double over and drill. Take that end and put it in a vice and bend the two branches back flat. I do believe 3.14 minus a an inch or two and a bolt.

Wouldn’t rotating the top to bottom of the wheel accomplish that? A mirror would resolve any issue with being able to see what you are doing?

Anything that the local fire wood folks don’t like because it won’t split easily. So elm and sycamore around here. But as said, what ever you got works well. . Of note is cotton wood for demmo’s as its light and hard to split.

Adaptive text is not my friend. I can look like an idiot with out Apple’s help. But I must say, if you have already succeeded in wrapping a biker around your tuyere, I don’t want to be an your “not my friend” list! But seriously, it doesn’t matter. The idea behind the paper is that you can remove and replace or simply push the tuyere in if the tip burns up. In truth, the clay will vitrify and form its own tunnel even if the tuyere burns up. If you are worried it will spin just leave off the paper.

The truth it wile IFI is a peer reviewed document it is also just a few (tens of thousands) old boys hanging out on Glenn Conner’s front porch. know I know humor can loose something in the translation, being that it depends so heavily common culture and language, but feel free to join in, trying to explain a joke we missed will teach the rest of us something about your native culture.

Just watch out, TW. If you get to close to Glenn’s place it might be 3 days before you get out of there, lol. The boy can out talk me!

But y’all talk slower than I type! Seriously, I meet people every day with thick accents but otherwise excellent English who think they speak poor English. Wile some troll who talked like they have a mouth full of marbles gets offended.

Welcome to both IFI and the US. Glad to have you. If you haven’t noticed many native speakers don’t exactly speak good English either, lol

It’s just a big flat bar roller, unless it has the dies for rolling Chanel. Bu the time you pay a machine shop to make them and you invest the time and shop materials to make one you will think $350 is cheap.

I assume, like many historic cities there are carriage rides. In your neck of the woods. Ask them who works on them.

Kids… … Apocalyptic! if I knew how big a PITA they are I would have eaten them when they were young! At least that’s what the grandkids think ;-)

Hard coal wants to go to out with out constant air and of corse it needs to coke before you forge. You really need a blower. properly managed the hot spot shouldn’t move.

Leaf spring makes good tools, hot chisels can easaly be made from them. Wire handled hot and cold chisels can be made, as well as small diameter fullers. mine can also make hardies and hardie tools if you deign them to fit diagonal in the hole. Easy for beginners to get started. a bit more advanced is to set a dimple into the flat of the spring ( a bolster, a ball pein or in my case an old ball joint and a soft hammer) and then punching and drifting to form an eye allows one to make a light adz or garden tools.

You can pick up rapid tong blank knockoffs on amizon for about $10 a pair.

Fire management is a skill in and of its self. Tho rivet forges are not ideal they are workable. Soft coal isn’t bad once you creat coke, or cheat and start with charcoal so as to start coking the coal. Hard coal with out a mechanically drivin blower or bellows will drive you crazy trying to keep it lit. As to charcoal, it will just eat threw it like crazy unless you use adobe to forn a trench. gassers are in some ways easier, but can be both ineffetent and under powers if not designed right. will until you learn to tame it, coal will burn steel.

Can you say, cadaver dogs, lol

Lime and clay make cement, heat breaks it back down. Use ash. lit you wrap a sheet of paper around the tuyere and then make it flush with the dirt it’s easy to replace but protected.

So if you go horizontal, you fit a baffle in the top to direct the smoke path over it, verticals work with a notched edge baffle but honestly it’s harder to fit the secondary air. With a horizontal you use the secondary air pipe as a brace for the front edge of the baffle. The gap only needs to be big enough to match the cross section of the stove pipe.

8-10 times is a better number than 15-20 times often quoted. The later being extrapolated from power hammer anvil published weights.

My suggestion would be to use the overloads, mono leaf, round spring or anti-sway bar. As they already have the thickness. Upsetting flat bar the hard way is, well hard. If you are going to upset flat bar, forge a blunt bevel on one edge, get a good heat and let the other edge set on the anvil a few seconds before driving the pointed edge back into the mass. Flip and let the heat rise back up and forge a blunt edge and repeat. All assuming you can do that in one heat… prevents the mushrooming and as your using carbon steel letting the anvil quench the opiate edge saves you issues. Get real good and you can forge both edges and drive both in at once but that takes a little more skill.

I have used smaller air compressor tanks and 55 gallon drums, Horizontal is easier to put in the baffle and secondary and primary air. How big is the shop? A 500 gallon tank is going to be huge! A 30 gallon compressor tank will heat a small house. Now a 500 gallon would be perfect as a charcoal retort…. i certainly can walk you threw what I know about air tight stoves.

Neither. Slag sticks to vitrified clay like glue, and sand melts and forms slag.the combination of about 1/3 clay and about 2/3 sand ( it’s actually dependent of on the type of clay and the amount of silt) is much better. Wood or coal ash added to the mix is the real magic ingredient. now that said, charcoal produces very little slag if it’s clean and you font burn up a lot of steel (old nails from palette wood is an issue) . And coal usually has a hearth an inch or two lower with coal piled up, the accumulated ash on top of the clay prevents the slag from sticking. The real problem comes in using a forge optimized for charcoal with coal.

Canning supplies is a common place to find citric acid. Often sold as sour salt