Jeff Pugh

Hey guys, what's cooking? Metal I hope. So I'm something of a wannabe woodworker who specializes in making scrapwood. Along the way I find I want to burn some metal for woodworking and maybe other purposes. eg.. spokeshave/plane blades, knives, whatnot... I've messed around a bit with a 'JABOD' with mostly less than awesome results. I did manage to beat a masons jointer into a mostly flat hunk of metal. That and I think I did OK on hardening/tempering a chunk of 1095 I shaped into a rounder plane blade. So messing around with dirt mound shapes the best I think I've done with is a sort of V trough, like the Whitlox but a single side air source. I have spent some time processing some dirt down to clay and have enough to make something, but I'm not entirely sure what shape to go with. I had planed to make something like the Whitlox, including putting a multi hole pipe in the bottom but I've seen some commenters suggesting this is actually a poor design. I'm using wood by the way. Scraps and chunked up limbs from the woods. I have no barrels for making a coal maker, not sure when I'll be able to do that. So I'm currently thinking duel wood/charcoal. Should there actually be any difference whether wood or charcoal in the forge design? Is there any kind of consensus on 'best' wood fired design? Also on the clay, I should mix something around 1/2 clay or less to 1/2 or more sand, is that right? I see some suggesting up to around 3/4 sand. Should I mix in some grass? I have no funds for perlite or whatever, but I can get plenty of sand, clay and grass. I can make ashes too if need be. I also have a few bricks I could smash up and toss in there if that is good. InB4 use the search. I used the search, including using google and when I search for wood burning forge the bulk of results are people telling people to use the search. Funny that. So if ya'll can post up some pics of good wood/charcoal burners that'd be awesome. Or post some links to the premium threads about such, also awesome. Oh one more thing, well probably several but one more I can think of now. Anyone whose worked with cob/clay in forms, what did you do about getting it out of the forms? Thanks.