MJTX

10 hours ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Witlox and lively forges aren’t the most efficient designers for charcoal. The Japanese  style forge is much more efficient. How long of blades do you need to heat? 

Mu suggestion is to build a strait sided trench 4-6” wide and twice as deep. A tuyere down one side instead of the bottom seems to work best. Build a manifold with 3/4” schedule 40 tuyere every 6” (so a foot long needs two) angled down about 5deg. Into the trench. Each end will be cut away allow you to insert your stock into the center of the fire (4-5” of the bottom of the trench) expect to regulate the air to creat a fire just above your quenching temp and heat slowly. No need for welding temp. 

This will save fuel, creat less fire fleas and creat an even heat.  Inserting a pipe or heavy wall rectangular tube is useful for finer stock. 

 

My blades are very small. 4 or 5 inches of actual blade at the largest . I cut them out of knife stock with a hacksaw and file them by hand.

I have never looked into a Japanese style forge. A very brief search after reading your post shows very large and involved setups. 

I’ll look into them further but do you have any suggestions for a simpler version or a direction to point me in?

I am fascinated by Japanese culinary knives and would love to be able to make something similar someday. My main knife project is a Santoku inspired chef knife for my daughter. I’m trying to learn heat treating with some of the other knives I have made before putting hers in the forge.
 

Thank you for your help.

9 hours ago, pnut said:

What you have there could work pretty good if you do some tweaking. I'd suggest reading all the jabod posts you can starting with the pinned ones And the Tim Lively washtub forge post. 

I prefer a side blast set up like a jabod butyou already have the washtub configuration so I'd make that work or at least try before tearing anything apart. You probably have a little too much height from the top of the air pipe to the top of the forge but I'm not really familiar with washtub type forges. 

Pnut

I was inspired by the Whitlox forge and the Lively forge. I missed the Q&A session Lively did a few days ago. I'm going to rent his video on Amazon soon, probably today. Before I welded up the vertical parts it was less than 3" from pipe to the top. I read that 4" should be the minimum so I made it 5". It would be easy to notch out a spot in the middle of the short verticals. I was thinking of adding a work rest of some type too.

I'll do more research and check out your recommendations.

Thank you for your help.

52 minutes ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

Pictures of your set up and fire will help. You may not have a deep enough fire.

Try not to laugh. Along with learning how to make knives and operate a forge, I’m learning how to weld. I cut the pieces from a plate I was using for a weld bench.

She’s 9” long about 6” wide. It’s 5” from the tuyere to the top. The pipe is 3/4”. I sliced an opening in the pipe that runs the length and is as wide as a cut off wheel for a 4 1/2 angle grinder. The pipe is underneath 2 pieces of 1/8 x 1” bar stock welded at 45 degree with less than 1/4” gap for air to get through. It’s lined with cat litter, sand, grass clippings, and ash. It’s already crumbling but I got to make steel change colors.

I had my heart set on a frosty burner and a small propane forge. The cost of insulating materials and tools needed made it too expensive for now. 

When I did the plate on the file thing I was burning the last bit of charcoal. Only half the file was in the forge and it was at a 45 away from me. It was resting on a pile of fully lit coals at the same angle. 
 

My fire maintenance technique is similar to watch burgers cook on a grill so that’s my next research assignment.

I built a charcoal forge and used it for the first time today. I have no experience and am looking for a way to harden some knives I made.

I stuck an old file in there to see what would happen and got it to a bright orange color. It wasn't uniform though. I laid a 1/4" piece of black, but very hot plate steel on the file. I took a look after a minute and the whole file was a uniform bright orange color where the plate was.

What did I do? Would laying a roughly knife sized steel plate or refractory brick on a blade help with even heating?

14 minutes ago, Paul Kin said:

Careful! The hose is not stainless, just stainless braided on the outside. The hose itself is still just regular rubber propane hose so it is still susceptible to heat and will melt if your not careful. 

Duly noted! Thank you.

Yeah, running straight from the tank would be concerning. I was going to add an elbow and a shut off to create some distance, plus it has a stainless hose.

Thanks again. Hopefully I can get this thing together soon.

Is there a reason why the gas supply is sized down to 1/4" from the 3/8" tank source?

I was looking for a hose and regulator on Amazon and came across one that comes with a 3/8 flare MNPT x 1/8 MNPT. 

Would it be possible to tap the fitting for the mig tip and have all of the connections 3/8" upstream?

Understood. Thank you.

I was reading the Frosty T pdf and noticed this photo.

Are the angled elbows included in the overall tube length?