OrganIQ

New guy- first post- I have been experimenting with refractory recipes for the last ten years or so- a couple of years after I moved from Northern California to the big island of Hawai’i... luckily the landscape here is pretty much all refractory here, I have built dozens of forges for different people/ shops - gas coal rock-it etc, and there are really only 2 factors that are in play building a good forge: air- and the consistency of it. Let me explain... the first few natural material experiments all involved me moving shaping and setting enormous, dense, ocean smooth ‘blue’ lava rock and similarly dense and heavy black beach sand clay mud etc. they inevitably fell into disrepair after using copious amounts of fuel to reach inconsistent temperatures, while not factored into the equation was AIR. I purchased ‘satans pubes’ or whatever the most expensive thing I could find on the internet for some of my early work. Your oxide heat layer is at the bottom of the stack no matter how you slice it. , I happened to be low on the material that I had brought to the job site and needed some effective material to finish the forge in time for the client’s blacksmithing brothers to get to Hawai’i for vacation and honestly I was not feeling good about the project at that point. Basaltic lava rock varies with time and eruption but it’s pretty much about 70\30 Fe/silicates. I needed to go back down to a difficult, place far away from the job to retrieve the material I thought was going to be the most important part of the article. In my haste I stopped around the corner and saw a big pile of fluffy “a’a’” lava that had just been scraped and pushed off of a newly developed area. Much less dense, crunchy crumble. It rendered a good portion of the finished forge and was easily collected processed and set. I made mortar with a small bag of bentonite red clay and crumbs. The fluffy CONSISTENCY of the material was the key! And the many AIR bubbles turned out to be the best thing for the final air/fuel ratio needed to feed and sustain temp. The men arrived and about fell over laughing at the cylindrical- natural fuel, natural air flow intake of my ‘design’. I left quickly and didn’t have the nerve to explain it and defend it, much less collection of payment for the job. I left one of my favorite hammers by accident and came to retrieve it just after dawn the next morning, the men had spent much of the night figuring out the way to utilize the station and were exstatic at the results that they were able to achieve. Even, consistent airflow through and through turns out works efficiently and effectively. Oops. I received double the payment previous agreement. I still build natural forges in this style 8 years later. I have been working on making steel from the most recent eruption 2018 which buried half of my neighborhood in 30-100 feet of lava. I’m aiming for a 300lb anvil by spring.