Iswhatitis

I have a sledge I was given with a thick walled piece of steel pipe welded to it. I would never have set it up like that personally but that’s beside the point. Metal in general makes a poor hammer handle for forging because of the shock. Some hammers have factory handles that are metal but these have rubber or some other material on the handle that absorbs a ton of shock. With a purely metal handle that doesn’t have a shock absorbing material over it every bit of the shock or energy from every strike transfers directly through the handle into your hand. This vibrates the joints, muscles, and tendons in your body and will probably cause injury if used regularly. Personally I really like good quality fiberglass handles and wood handles. Fiberglass can be more durable than wood and it absorbs shock like wood does. It is also very light.

You are talking about the very hard type of brick that isn’t called “insulating fire brick” but just “fire brick” right? Because that is what I have as a throwaway floor. It is just sitting on top of the kastolite. I’m just making sure I am understanding what you are saying. I actually just swapped it out for a fresh one with a coat of itc-100 today. Then I realized I had failed hard heat treating a hammer earlier. I had it glowing just barely and my oil wasn’t quite hot enough yet and of course my tank decides to run out of gas so I took the pluming torch I use to light my forge and was trying to add a bit more heat to the last little flame coming out of my t burners by shooting it into the front of the forge at the hammer head, it was kind of ridiculous and probably looked seriously weird but Once the burners went totally out I grabbed the head which was probably 50-100 degrees too cool and dunked it in the oil and hoped for the best. I went and got more propane and then hot drift tempered it to straw, cooled it, and tryed it against some cold mild and it just felt too soft so I will heat treat it again using water this time. btw: are you supposed to have your water warmed up to a certain temp before quenching like you do with oil?

In my opinion it is best to have it both ways. Cast in the floor with kastolite, but make the floor /walls large enough to where you can fit a hard fire brick on top of your floor as a sacrificial floor. My forge is a 20# propane tank for the body like yours and that is how I did it. I am glad I did it this way because my fire brick floor now has a skin of scale on it that softens and becomes sticky when the forge is on which is fine but I know at some point I can just change the hard fbrick to a fresh one and get a brand new floor. I used kastolite as well which is said to be more resistant to flux than most refractory and I plan to weld in my forge in the future but keep in mind that resistant isn’t the same thing as flux proof. My hard fire brick floor is really there for the flux so that it doesn’t start messing up my kastolite floor. btw I had enough itc-100 left to put on the hard fire brick floor plus another hard fire brick for a future swap out which I think helps the efficiency of the forge floor a bit but it definitely isn’t necessary. The itc-100 was really purchased just for coating the whole inside of the refractory to increase the efficiency. I bought a 1/4 pint which wasn’t too pricy and was enough to coat the whole thing. note: when I say hard fire brick I am talking about the ones that are normal size but much thinner, I think about 3/4” but I’d have to look. This way it doesn’t take up much room in the forge.

Thanks man and thank you for developing these burners! They are way hot! I can turn this bad boy to 5 psi and flick on both burners for a bit to heat up the forge, then I can cut one off and use one burner still at 5psi to forge regular stuff. I haven’t tried welding in it yet but I can tell this bad boy will weld like a champ!

Hey guys I just wanted to update to say that I finished her to the point where I have been using her. Thank goodness for all the great info and advice on this site because it is insane how much better this forge is compared to my noob plaster perlite sand in a paint can forge! anyway here is a couple pictures: I still have yet to build the brackets that the bricks will sit on but I will do it once I go and get some angle iron this weekend. Thank you all!

It’s also just such a valuable resource of people passionate about blacksmithing who all together have a huge base of knowledge and are willing to help people and give knowledge freely. Even if it hurts a bit to try to modify my communication it’s worth it. Not to mention the blueprints. Speaking of I am going to make some of those tongs in one of uri hofi’s blueprints which can hold an amazing variety of stock.

Awww man I used bad language again so I guess they have to check my posts before anyone sees them, sorry mods! It’s a hard habit to break I apologize for breaking the rules. I did end up bagging it and there is a nice fine condensation on the inside of the plastic bag so I’m glad you confirmed that was the correct thing to do. It should actually be firm enough now to flip and do the top so I will most likely get that done in the next couple of hours so I can let it chill in the bag for a full 24 before I start progressive firing. Thanks again for your awesome expert help JHCC, I’m someone who wants to things as correctly as I can the first time so my result is at least decent despite me being a total noob so having you guys to ask about this stuff is a relief. I’m also pretty slow to understand things sometimes even when it’s spelled out for me so thanks again!

So I put the KOL on the bottom half and now am finding conflicting info on whether I should flip it ina few hours once it firms up and do the top, or whether I should give it 24 hrs before flipping it. I also have a question: should I put it in the plastic bag with the wet towel while I wait for it to get firm enough to flip or do I wait until the whole thing is cover in the KOL to put it in the bag???

Ok guys, I just finished putting the KOL in the bottom half of the forge, and now of course I go back to read stuff and for the first time I have found some people saying that you should wait a full day before you flip the forge and put the top half on. All I had seen up to this point was “wait a few hours until the KOL starts to harden then flip it and do the top.” well now I don’t know which of the two I should do. Before I read where people were saying that it’s best to only wait a few hours so that the first application is getting hard but still a bit wet so that when you do the top it bonds better to the bottom, but I don’t want to do this and have my floor sag upwards because I flipped it too soon. Every xxxx time I do something I research the xxxx out of it, but when I start doing it I do a bit more research and always find conflicting info to everything I had previously learned causing me to doubt myself. I am also wondering if I am supposed to have it in the bag with the wet towel before I put on the top or wait to put it in until after the whole thing is done. What I am going to do is go put it in a bag with a towel because it probably won’t hurt and when you awesome people wake up you can advise me what to do. Anyway current pics:

Ok guys thanks so much! Today I fired the rigidizer for a bit and now I am going for application 1 of 2 of kastolite. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh well if that’s the case then all I can tell you is that I bought them from Etsy(don’t have a drill press) from a seller that had hundreds of great reviews for this specific item and that they seem to work really well so far although all I have done is light them inside and outside the forge. They are about 7” long not including the flare or the t. There are a couple things different from frosty’s original design but the reviews seem to indicate that they still work fine.

Yeah they are but I wanted to have one coil partly to keep the valve cool and if you try to go tighter than that then the tubing kinks. It may look stupid but it works.

Hey guys, I just wanted to post a couple pictures of where I am at with my forge build. I just finished firing the rigidizer today and tonight I will put on the Kast-O-Lite. After the KOL I will be putting a thinner layer of Bubble Alumina on just the bottom of the forge to improve its flux durability. Finally, I will apply a coat (or 2?) of itc-100. You guys have been such a huge help both reading old threads as well as directly answering my questions. Anyway here are the current pictures:

Awesome replies thank you. I wasn’t aware that rigidizer had to be fired because none of the forge building instructions I read said anything about firing it with just wool and rigidizer. It’s now very dry and I wonder if it is too late to do it at this point. Buzzkill: I don’t think it will take longer to heat up because of a thin layer of bubble alumina especially since I am putting the reflective coating over it but if it does it hopefully won’t be a big deal. My reason for using it is that according to my research it is even a good bit more flux resistant than just kastolite so I felt that I would be able to go longer without having to patch the forge from wear as a result of welding but the sources I got this information from also didn’t say anything about firing the rigidizer right after applying it to the wool. jhcc: do you think it is worth trying to fire the rigidizer itself at this point? It has been dry for about a week. When I applied it it soaked into the wool and didn’t just sit on the surface so it seems like it should hopefully be ok. The container doesn’t say anything in the directions about firing it, it just says to let it dry at room temperature and that if you want to you can expose it to 150 degrees F to help it dry faster. If it was mandatory you would think they would put it in the directions but I wouldn’t put it past them to leave it out. I’m assuming the reasoning behind firing the rigidizer must have to do with improving the adhesion of the castable refractory because once the kastolite is on, it should prevent any particles of wool from becoming airborne.

Thank you to both of you guys. Buzzkill: when you talk about turning one way then turning the other way, are you saying to apply it in 3 different sections? In other words do it in thirds? Also when I wet the ceramic wool, how wet does it need to be? Should I just mist it a bit or should I get it pretty wet? Also how much water did you mix with each pound of kast-o-lite? Or did you just mix it by eye? Dragon: how much water per pound did you use if you didn’t just eye ball it? How much did you wet your ceramic wool before applying the kast-o-lite? Thanks a ton guys! I have a couple pounds of bubble alumina I plan to put on just the bottom over the kast-o, and then i have that it-100 stuff or something like that to put on everywhere last. This will be amazing when it is done. I have been using a shitty coffee can forge with terrible insulation for like six months and the difference this forge will probably make will probably be shocking.