seagiant

Hi, I'm not a full time smith,but thought I would give the info I came up with when I looked into this. I have taken about 4 classes at Campbells in NC,which gives you a week to talk to the teacher who is a pro and to get some pretty good info on the life style. The first thing you come up against is there is only so many hours in a day and consequently only so many items you can produce. This is you're ceiling and thats if you are good with a good name and a quality product. Taking a 1/2" steel rod and putting a twist in it and calling it a fire poker ain't ART! Meaning most of the things you make,people don't really need,they have to want it! I like to make knives,but if you buy a shop full of tools and then you spend a week to make the knife,making the best one you can make, what is it worth??? If you sold it for $150 is that good money??? I think not! This is not to be taken as a negitive post but the next time you run into a full time blacksmith going to work in his shop everyday to feed his wife and kids,buy the man a drink, because he's a hero as far as I'm concerned!!! Like I said just my 2 cents worth!

Hi Jymm, Yea,well I've been smithin for about 20 years, and all so have a coal side draft forge. I weld also for knives mostly but all so for items like fireplace sets and such. Modern steel dosen't weld as nice as the old wrought iron but you already know that I'm sure. Maybe using 2" of K-wool and satinite and then some ITC-100 I can do with out the preheat. It would be easier to build and maintain. I built a Don Fogg type vertical forge which was excellent and made a blown forge fan out of me,but the only thing I didn't like was the no floor aspect of it. Sometimes I like to "soak" the steel and if you wanted to do that you had to stand there and hold it! I had a friend that wanted to forge so gave it to him and now want to build another. I noticed people are using the gate valve like you mentioned for the air throttle,looks good to me also. I've looked at Indian Georges site and Tim Zowada's so have a few ideas. Did you do anything special on the burner end of things. I was thinking of using 1.5" pipe to the side and then going up to3" of 2" and then back to 3/4" into the forge to creat a mixer. Any ideas on that?

Hi Jymm, Thanks for the comeback on this. You seem to have strong ideas on this and from a look at your site seem to have the work history to back it up! I actually never saw a downside to preheating the air but what you come up with in your mind and what actually works is sometimes very different!!! I want to heat treat knives in my forge (1500 degrees F) and thought the preheat would help with this? On the other hand may be able to do it anyway without it. Just want to do a little research before starting, to make the best one I can. Thanks again!

Hi, I'm looking at building a new blown forge but would like to use a air preheat feature somewhat like the Sandia Lab forge. What I"m thinking is to cut a couple of holes on the lower side of the forge then build a box against this, line with K-wool then run my piping through the box to pick up heat then the pipe runs to the intake of my blower and is used to mix with the propane to the other side of the forge to the burner. I could even run the pipe doubled in the box a couple of times to pick up more heat. Of course the actual air is coming from outside the box and is only heated as it runs through the pipe in the heated box to the blower. The question is how hot is enough and how hot is to much,ie: blower burnt and or pre ignition of propane??? Was wondering if anyone has done this before? Preheating is suppose to save up to 25% on fuel so I see this as a good thing! Any ideas? Thanks!