Ajbforging

It was rather disappointing because I used a rather large amount of plaster and it coated a pretty penny.

Will do! Thank you for the help and direction!

The fire pot is only about 1" deep, 6" by 6". The hole is maybe 1/2 to 3/4 I'm diameter.

1 hour ago, SReynolds said:

"T" 

You need a fire pot with access to it to place your stock into the fire ball.

But how have you been heating your stock (which you are saying is difficult or cannot do) if you are familiar with how to make knives? 

The ball of glam has come up from the pot and I piled on a large mound of coal to insulate and hopefully expand the heat. 

I think my fatal flaw was my fire pot design and the way I supplied it air. I will probably get more metal and weld up a larger firepot to forge in. Is there a way to make a large firepot into a sideblast of sorts? My orginal design had my air funneling from the side of the fire and that really seemed to create a good fire. (Also trying to get away from my air supply hole getting clogged by dust, small coal or a clinker.) 

By the way, the idea behind a solid fuel forge finally dawned on me. I think the only reason my orginal design worked was because it was in a deepish bowl shape, giving me a crude fire pot. Now it seems really simple to make a forge with the idea of a "hole in the ground with a air supply"

P.S. you guys are awesome. I'm taking so much info in, makes all my previous theories crumble

3 minutes ago, Buzzkill said:

In the picture at least it looks like your blower is directly below your fire pot.  Especially since you show a fairly large unrestricted hole, that will allow ash, clinker, molten metal, etc to run straight down into your blower.  This could damage or destroy your blower, but also you could end up with a plugged air path.  Typically you'll see a "T" fitting at the bottom of the fire pot so that the blower can be mounted off to the side more or less horizontally and an ash dump straight down from the fire pot to avoid this problem. 

I wouldn't worry about the bricks being a heat sink with either charcoal or coal.  The fire should be contained in the pot itself and the combination of ash and unburned fuel provides some insulation effect.  Regardless of whether it's open air outside the fireball area or thick rocks, that should have no noticeable impact on the fire temperature itself.  That is governed by the shape of the fire and the air blowing into the fire.  However, based on your pictures I don't see a good way for you to get stock down into the correct zone of the fire for heating once you have your fire ball established.  As long as those bricks are just a loose stack that is no problem since you can create gaps on opposite sides of the fire to feed your stock into the fire at the correct height.  It will probably be easier for you if those are vertical slots or V shapes rather than just a gap part way down though.  It might be a good idea for you to have at least one bar or some other restriction across your opening for your air gate though.  One preferred method on here is the use of a domed pipe cap with a number of holes drilled into it.  The dome shape allows the slag/clinker to run down around the cap in a donut shape and avoid plugging up your air holes.  With a wide open bottom hole anything that is heavy enough and has low enough air resistance will run into the opening and down your pipe even with the blower on.

I was using four pieces of expanded metal bolted together to keep coal and clinkers from falling down into my pipe, but I do get what you mean by the T shape. The only reason I didn't go with the T was because I had already welded it down at work. (I'm a welder by trade.)

The expanded metal never held up though. I'll try a domed cap to replace my expanded metal grate. 

Another thought I had was, what if I lined the brick with a sort of refractory fire clay mixture? Might that fix my heating issue?

Proven design being something along the lines of a clay forge or brake drum?

That's exactly what I've been working on, is 3/8 round stock. If I can get my heat up there I have no issues forging out knives. 

I will post the photos I have of my second build, but they aren't pretty. 

So, I've gone through a few different designs, trying to build an efficient coal forge. I started out using a grill lid and putting a mixture of sand and plaster of Paris in it to form the bowl where my fire would be held, with a "airtight" tunnel coming from the side of the lid where I bolted the centrifuge fan I used for my air supply. This design brought me up to forge welding temperature but the "refractory" decayed. I demolished the bowl and decided to go with a firepot made of 1/4 stainless steel surrounded by patio brick. This design was a few steps back and I can't bring my heat up high enough to forge weld and begin folding metal. My question now is, is there a surefire design that can give me the heat efficiency? I am having a hard time believing a brake drum forge would give me ample amount of heat to hear up the metal to forge welding temperature. 

I eventually would like to attempt to make demascus steel. Which is why I stress forge welding.