North State

After I last posted, I felt a surge of ambition, so I went out and chipped out the castible. It wasnt as difficult as I anticipated. I had some 2" Insawool on hand so I carefully sliced it into an aproximately 1" layer. I sprayed 3M super 77 glue inside to hold the wool and now I am reseraching rigidizers. Pnut, I looked into what you called "hydrophobic colloidal silica" turns out they sell the stuf at West Marine near me. The only thing is, I cant find much information on using it for this application. It is definitely the nore cost effective option. Real wool rigidizer on amazon runs north of $30 while the thing of silica is only $15 and I could get it right away. Alas, I dont want to be in the same boat I was a few days ago, tearing out and re-doing...

Well said, Pnut. Thanks for the encouragement! I actually found the burner to be quite easy! From the looks of it, it has a consistent flame and I am optimistic about it. We will see. Wonder how hard of a time that castible is going to give me as I chip it out?

Punt,I read it, however I was already 75-80% underway before I found it. Reluctantly, I will most likely be doing some chipping and relining. I just hate having to back up, but I think it will be worth it to re do the lining. Marcus and JHCC, i will definitely take your thoughts into consideration. Thanks!

I thought there was some spray out there that would stiffen up the surfce of the wool. My question is this, suppose I been out the hard refractory and put in the wool, how tough will the refractory e with the softer wool behind it? Will it want to collapse? That ws my concern from the beginning before I stumbled upon iforgeiron...

Thanks for the advice, Marcus. I am afraid of the refractory issue. Its going to be some nasty chipping if i have to to start over. I had her built before I found the forum so here goes. I will put some on the doors as per your recomendation.

ALCON, Just a little update on the forge progress. As discussed before, she hasn't been proven yet. Its been a fairly busy summer around here. Anyway as far as construction, here's what went down this past weekend... ...added some stainless expanded metal to the doors. We will see if it holds up to the heat. ...oh and I made a stand for the DIY Anvil stand too. I know its top heavy. I'm going to beef the base up later.

Blackironskillett, I was thinking the same thing! My in-laws family is all from the Black Mountain/Swannanoa/Asheville end of the state and forges seem like belly buttons, everyone's got them, the farther west in the state you go!

Welcome, Josh! I'm a little late to the party, but anyhow. I work at near by MCAS Cherry Point. I'm unfortunately not prior military, but thank you for serving! It would be cool for us to get together with some other curmudgeon and beginners who live in our area sometime to learn this obsession!

Looking forward to stopping by the blacksmith exhibit this fall at the 2019 State Fair! It was at last year's display that I met Mr. Randy Stoltz, I believe. He encouraged me to continue to pursue my interest in learning the craft. My goal is to put the forge that I have been able to assemble to use by the time this year's fait rolls around. The slow speed that I have worked is my own fault. I didn't get my forge built or find this site until I had done a considerable amount of over analyzing. Anyhow, see you there!

Hazendart, what of you isolate one burner and use just the other one? I wonder if that would make it better, worse or same? I can't imagine the flame laying over any more.

Buzzkill, thanks for the encouragement. Thomaspowers had me thinking my forge was jacked when he didn't know exactly what I had, but in his defence, nor do I totally. Being a noob is tough sometimes. Since the refractory in the boilers at work is designed to keep the heat inside the firebox, and thus enhance efficiency, my logic said it should do fine. We will see. Who knows, if I have to eat crow, I guess I could just it out and start over as per IFI instructions! Standby for function test!

Genuinely, thanks for the helpful advice. I know that that the sages of IFI consider not taking their advice as anathema, but be assured, the mistakes that I may have made were comitted before I found IFI. Alas, since i have made it this far, I guess I will give it a whirl as is and see what kind of heat retention I get. Since the variable in question is the type of refractory I used, we will just have to see. I have been looking for a formula for calculating forge efficiency, but have come up dry. Is there a sticky for that? I know the area of my forge, so if u can find the formula, I can plug in the specs from my refractory info and everything else. Thanks again for the help.

...and nothing I mentioned had anything to do with being an educated on heat transmission, expansion and calculation. When I find a formula I will try to see if my set up is satisfactory. In the mean time, here is the tech data from my refractory.

Thanks for the advice, ThomasPowers. I admit i am a greenhorn, but the technical data on the stuff I have says it is rated for 2500° F. Being new to the forge universe, I can't confirm or deny this. The only YouTube advice I have used is on the burner, which i took with a grain of salt when I had to modify it.

Well, having always had a desire to learn metalworking (See my post in the intro section to get my story.), and being frustrated with the progress I was making, then throwing out all of my accumulated parts for my original plan, I stared over. I settled on this propane burner set up. Thanks to whomever credit belongs. I made one slight modification, though. I found trouble with getting the flame to hold her own with that 3/4 nipple on the end. So i deleted it. I will most likely grind out the threads on the flame end reducer to enhance the flame by reducing any turbulence. I got a 10 gallon air tank off a compressor that was flooded in hurricane Florence, from my local junk man. I used scrap pipe for the burner guides which I tapped and added 3/8" bolts to hold the burner(s) in place. Not knowing how much heat one burner would produce, I planned for a second burner. After I cut off the ends, I again used scrap 1/8" plate for the openings. I used some 2" square tubing scrap to make the hinges and some 1/4" flat bar for the latch. Luckily, I work at a boiler plant and we had some contractors doing some refractory work inside our fireboxes. I was able to get some left over Harbison Walker (Greencast I believe)refractory and 2" Inswool blanket. I used the refractory on the body and the Inswool on the doors to reduce weight when opened. While I havent had the chance to run her through the paces, I am fairly pleased with the results thus far. I have some light weight 15" fire brick that I plan on cutting a belly in and use to make the forge floor. Please let me know what you think. Your most wise and holy counsel is appreciated! Following are pictures along the way. hopefully they will load in some form of chronological order.

Irondragon, thanks for your service in the USCG! You're right, Thomas. I am really more interested in the blacksmithing end of the house. That's just a phrase that my coworker uses when he is bragging on his welding skills... you know, golden-armed pre-madonnas.

Thanks for the great advice, Steve! One of my many regrets in life is not enlisting! As an 18 year old, I was not ready for what the military would have required of me! at that time I was too much of a fraidy-cat to do something like that! Looking back, that was a stupid reason! Alas, I do have great respect and admiration for servicemen and women!

Greetings from Eastern North Carolina! Super stoked, no pun intended, to learn about becoming a Master Manipulator of Molten Metals! I live in the biggest small town I have ever been in. New Bern is the county seat of Craven county. Settled in the early 1700's, New Bern is rich in history. New Bern was the first state capitol of North Carolina, at The Tryon Palace. Tryon was burned after the civil war and stayed in ruin until around the 1950's. It is now operated as a historical museum with many exhibits including a colonial blacksmith shop. New Bern is the birthplace of Pepsi. (Its not marketed here. The original formula was concocted in a pharmacy in downtown New Bern.) My story goes like this. I have lived in eastern NC all my life. I attended college in Wendell, NC and then transferred to another school in Va Beach, VA. It was in college that I met the gal who would soon become the love of my life. I moved back to Eastern NC after graduation to New Bern and we got married a year later after she graduated. We were blessed with two beautiful girls. Way back when we were dating, I told her that there were at least three things on my bucket list: 1.) rebuild a car/truck engine. I have swapped many engines. Both of my beaters are on second engines. My dad and I restored a '79 Trans Am. I have just never built an engine from the bottom up. 2.) I would LOVE to throw a hand grenade! Because, I mean, who wouldn't want to do that!? The red tape involved in doing it, however, has not allowed accomplishing this goal to happen. 3.) I have, as far back as I can remember, I have wanted to take a bone stock piece of raw metal, heat it up, harden it, grind an edge on it, and sharpen it to a better than store-bought blade. I began pursuing this dream but got frustrated and scrapped all the materials that I had assembled. Then they came out with the television show and I was like, "that's it, I am definitely doing it, now!" I have been blessed to accumulate enough parts and supplies to assemble a double burner propane forge made from a 10 gal air compressor tank. its about 95% complete and I cant wait to begin smashing some metal! One of my favorite events each year is when we go to Raleigh where my in-laws live, and go to the NC State fair and stop by the blacksmith exhibit. Being the beginner that I am, and having difficulty locating and organizing other people who are interested in forging has made things somewhat slow, but nonetheless, still rewarding. I look forward to gaining some advice from, as y'all say "curmudgeons" on smithing in general as well as organizing and maybe establishing a blacksmith chapter in the eastern part of North Carolina.