Ragnarok

Nice forge my anvil is all days and onions :)

forgot to mention I like coal but may switch to coke, but i believe forges a pretty much the same for both of those, so that shouldn't affect the design. Rune

sorry if the post didn't seem clear really all i wanted to know is what styles of firepot people had made and in what material I suppose, and if anyone had built a brick forge and what material the firepots brick forges usually were. and if anyone had heard or cement/fire clay as this was described in a guide on building brick forges i had seen. i need my forge to be able to do almost anything though huge fires will not be necessary I'm not making armour or anvils, but i would need to be able to put pretty large bars in the fire, but really all i wanted ideas on were fire pots, as I've heard varying ideas on what's best especially when it comes to depth some say 2" some say 6" size wise I'd like it to be about 12" round, is there an optimum depth for a size like this, is it better to make it round oval or rectangular? and what materials can be used to make them, I've only used side blast forges before, but the up blast makes a lot of sense to me. as for cost that that shouldn't be a problem as i intend to make and fire the bricks from clay i dig from my own land so that will be free apart from the coal to fire them, and my time is unlimited pretty much, and as for the the location i hope that my forge will remain there for ever, hence not caring how long it takes to build. so basically i want a fairly big forge that can except fairly thick long items as for making gates and the like, as well as doing all kinds of other work, pretty much like an old local blacksmiths forge as for the car, buy a land rover Defender or series 2/3 best cars in the world buy one and you can keep it forever haha.

hey all, I've been thinking about building a new forge for a while now and i'm getting a new workshop soon, but i'm not sure what type to build, what do use all recommend, i like the idea of making a brick forge with an up blast, but not quite sure about the firepot design and material, i've heard you can use concrete where half the sand has been replaced with fireclay? is this really heat resistant enough? the other way i was thinking of building it is to make a steel firepot from 1/2" steel plate, but i like the idea of the brick and concrete forge better. any advice on design and materials would be much appreciated. Thanks Rune.

wow that looks fun!

yeah old sowing machines with treadle tables pop up a lot and are really cheap normally, you can get them for

i pay around

another way you could use it would be to add a small pulley to the drive shaft and get some parts from an old treadle sowing machine table and make it treadle powered, would be easier than making it hand cranked probably :)

yeah i worked that out about the fullering down I've made one half of a round hold pair and almost done the other half it's going much better this time, i need to set up a vice near my forge though so that i can do the twist better that or I'm thinking of making somethings similar to scrolling wrenches to make the twist, i think it would be better than hammering it :)

thanks for the info rockstar :)

yeah i've always read that mild steel is fine for tongs.. and even if you want to make some hard steel ones latter you could at least practice on mild steel till you get good at it, it'll be cheaper and you may find you don't want anything harder anyway :)

ahh interesting sounds very good :)

correction, over

Jimbob. yeah they still make them but the cost over

here are some photos of the ones that broke, you can see where the jaw has been welded back on.