Happy Smithing all,
I am located near Hinton OK for any of you seasoned blacksmiths in the area, would love to get in touch.
I hopped on this hobby after really just spark in my head to be more self reliant and get back to the roots of man, creating tools and weapons for survival, while not quite applicable anymore the idea of casting and forging sparked my interest. I have read in the forums roughly 4-5 hours worth now scattered over a couple days, wow what a lot of great info.
now im asking for some feedback! While there's some things id like to change about the entire set up this is what I had around and im DETERMINDED to make it produce, like ive read a million times a hole in the ground will do just fine, so I reckon any contraption someone is crazy enough to build could work. Either way gonna try and report back!
I have a 10 gallon galvanized Steel bucket, I am lining it with fire clay for added insulation, using steel piping for air inlet fed by a hair drier, I absolutely want to get a hand crank later on, just workin with what's on the property. I intended to add 2 sets of grating 1 for the crucible to sit on, 1 for the fuel source to sit on, and fall through as needed, this bucket will be sitting on a wood table with a hole cut through matching the hole in bottom of bucket for ask droppings, there will be a steel sliding door that can be pulled to both create an updraft and allow ash to fall into the bucket below, which will be sitting of a fire clay block, as well the top of the table will be lined in the clay.
I have also added an exhaust tube, same steel pipe as the air inlet, however will be putting a flapper on it, thinking to keep it where the pressure of the gas and smoke from fuel will force open as need be to not let temps drop but let gas formation escape. Hopefully at least!
as far as the rest, it will be double lidded with the galvanized lid, as well a clay lid. Im not quite sure this is necessary from my readings as ive seen countless open top fires, and may not need it, however going to construct anyways would rather be prepared than not.
I have a drawing I made up of it, hopefully my words were visual enough to help the picture make sense.
I would love and appreciate any and all feedback on this design, improvements, changes.
Coal isn't necessarily hard to come by but its not quite easy either. not planning to melt high temp metals right off the dot, or am I. either way, looking at grabbing a couple bags of charcoal, no not the grilling kind, I promise I been reading! and I got some feed corn already around and found the corn v coal situation highly interesting, so will be attempting both soon.
also one last thing, for the fire clay, I know it needs to be baked for hardening, I was planning to just do a wood fire at first, and then upon further inspection and cooling if all goes well start playin with fire and see if I can't melt something.
Thanks!