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I Forge Iron

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Hi. I was wondering if anybody had any ideas of using up an excess of wood for forge fuel. The obvious answer is to make charcoal, but I tried it out this week and found out several not so pleasant details. The forum and Internet is full of ways to make charcoal, but there are some limitations.

We tried using the instructions from one website which suggested using a 55 gallon drum with some 2" holes in the bottom. The wood was placed in the drum and it was propped up on bricks to allow a fire to ignite the wood inside. The problem with this approach is that it produces a lot of smoke. The farm we were working on is not particularly large, only about 1600 acres, so this amount of smoke definitely puts us at risk for a visit from county fire. This is highly undesirable, and, it appears that the unburned products are potent greenhouse gasses. This is also undesirable. I couldn't find a reference, but burning charcoal this way may actually be worse than using a fossil fuel. There is a lot of effort going on to suppress the old direct methods of making charcoal in developing countries for exactly this reason. Consensus among NGO's suggests that LPG is a more recommended fuel for cooking.

Another, cleaner, way of making charcoal is the indirect method. Here, the flames are not allowed to touch the wood, and the volatiles are piped back into the heating fire to add to its caloric value. Methanol and acetic acid are burned to CO2, reducing greenhouse potential. There is a slight disadvantage of increased capital expenditure, but the huge disadvantage is the inefficient contact. The heat source is far from the center of the retort, and heat transfer is very inefficient. This turns out to be a severe limitation for us. There are visitors to the farm, and they are curious. Nobody wants to be on charcoal duty for 4-6 hours, and it is tempting to do a little bit of forging. Such an apparatus needs to be watched. I can envision a bunch of old men sitting around and swapping lies for 4-6 hours, but this isn't us. :lol:

Thomas has a good idea with his firepit that he fishes coals out of. This keeps the smoke and heat out of one's face. I am looking for Frosty's setup, but the link seems to have disappeared. He had some kind of chimmney or chute into which wood chunks would be fed. We just found out how easy it is to make these wood chunks, using a chainsaw and a splitting maul. Is there a recent link to his setup and procedure?

The chimney pipe in our forge is marginal. It will probably require some enhancement. I had a wood removal project at another location. I was able to get rid of all the excess wood by using a hybrid method combined with a meat cooker. Cooked a lot of meat, made a lot of charcoal, got rid of the wood. This time, though, the amount of wood to dispose of is a lot larger. Just have to find a decent way to use it.

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http://www.shimbir.demon.co.uk/biocharrefs.htm

The only wood I've ever heard of being routinely used as forge fuel is green chestnut chunks in the appalachians, and I am not sure if the practice remains to this day. I have freinds who make charcoal using a two barrel system, the outer barrel holds chips, and the inner barrel holds chunks. It does smoke a bit at first, but after a short while the exhaust becomes clear. They do this on a six acre farm in a small town where six acres is a huge property, so I don't understand what your problem with smoke is. Are you using wet or green wood? The system with the 55 gallon drum and a coulpe nipples and pipe elbows is not that expensive, surely under thirty dollars.

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I have used the direct method of forging with wood, build the fire, insert the iron.

It burns making coals (charcoal) in the process. The fire needs to be a little deeper, and new fuel needs to added on a regular basis to replace what is being burned. The radiant heat is a factor that must addressed but a little shielding will fix that. The best size I found for the fuel is less than 2 x 4 x 4 inches. The forge being used was the 55 Forge with a supercharger, but a brake drum type forge would work if you added a side wall of some nature to make the fire deeper. For those in burn zones, this method does produce some sparks that get into the air so caution is needed to remain mindful of where these sparks are going.

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Hi Arftist. I considered the indirect process and discussed it with the other blacksmiths. The problem is not the cost, although we will have to source another drum (they are $50 around here). The problem is the exterior wall. I proposed cinder block, but one of the fellows was worried about it spalling. The other problem is that the area we are using will be required for another use during the non-burn season (summer). Although I am very good at moving cinderblocks, my helpers don't really like it. In addition, it takes quite a bit of time for the heat to move to the center of the retort without direct contact of the hot gases.

The odd thing is that 1600 acres is not that much if the neighbors are picky. And they do call the fire dept. I know a smith who has a decent sized property, maybe a hundred or so acres, and he has a picky neighbor who gives him trouble about his power hammer. It is not his next door neighbor. It is someone about 3-4 miles away, but right down a gully. The sound just shoots straight down it. I have even had trouble on the farm with loud neighbors playing music too loud. They must be 2 miles away, but they are loud! And calling the police doesn't work. We have had the police called on us for noise too.

Anyway, we did get a warning. So the direct method, at least with the single barrel, won't fly.

Hi Glenn. I am going to have to try the small chunks of wood. We can get plenty of those :D I think I am going to have to rig up a combination heat shield and mini-stack. I started reading some of those bio-char resources.

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Here is a gentleman that is using concrete block to make his charcoal retort ovens more efficient. I don't personally see a problem with it. Also if you notice in the pictures that there is a minimum of smoke being generated using this method. Once the woodgas inside the barrels lights there is almost no smoke at all. This is how I plan on making my own charcoal when I get things set up for it.

http://www.twinoaksforge.com/BLADSMITHING/MAKING%20CHARCOAL.htm

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Surfing around on the Internet, I have found a lot of new things. First and foremost, I have noticed that my silly charcoal burn barrel is "illegal in every state in the union." It just produces too much smoke. Apparently, there is a charcoal industry in Minnesota which is grandfathered in. Nobody can make more of these polluting kilns, and they are not welcome in other states. Just the methane that they produce overcomes any negative carbon benefits that they may have. There are a lot of plans for this kind of barrel floating around the Internet. If you look a little harder, there are also reports of people measuring emissions, trying vainly to light the smoke with propane torches, and making excuses in general.

There are a few cleaner ways of doing this, and we are looking for a mobile one. From now on, we will not do this on such a large scale, but instead start working on a smaller scale. There are two designs which show promise. The indirect retort with redirected gases, and the TLUD, or top lit updraft. From reports of people trying this, it looks like the TLUD is cleaner and more effective, even though the yield may be lower. I really like the idea of a wood gas stove, but I have not come up with something that needs to be cooked at such a large scale. Rendered pig fat? Pot roasts? Beans?

Does anyone have any experience with the wood gasifier approaches? Are these time effective? It appears that the eco-friendly use of waste biomass is a world-class problem. In other words, there is a lot of activity going on investigating it. In the paraphrased words of a great professor I once heard: Do not do tangential research on this kind of topic. Pick up the phone. You're not alone. Or make a social call...

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Last time I spoke with Tom Latane he was using wood to forge with on a day to day basis, using charcoal for more critical work. I would say the method he described to me was the most direct method you could use. He just feeds wood in the side of his forge fire like you would feed in green coal, the wood on the edge of the fire turns to charcoal. It sounds like Glenn's method is the same.

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I have a set up very similar to the one here but I can either direct the woodgas under the drum like he does, which is normally what I do, or send it to the forge and use the wood gas to forge or to my furnace for melting metal (which I haven't tryed yet but hope to soon), and I also have a book where he shows how to use the wood gas to run a small engine on.
I haven't gotten to the small engine thing yet because you have to build scrubbers to clean the woodgas with and it doesn't really appeal to me that much since I have other uses for it where it gets burned as is and with the scrubbers you have to clean up and dispose of the mess that's left from that process.
Ultimately using it to assist it the making of the charcoal is best since it greatly reduces the amount of wood/fuel that is needed to make the charcoal which saves alot of wood to be turned into charcoal.
Maybe you just need to move to the other side of the 1600 acres, which is a long distance. My opperation is set up on the property where my house is which is only 2 acres and I have no problems there and the stuff we do on the 170 acre farm right behind me nobody ever even knows about, but this is all flat land and I know things can be different when hills and valley's are involved.

Any way thats how I do it and it produces very little smoke when everything is dry.

welder19

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The load of charcoal was harvested today. :)

The run was very successful. There were a few brown ends at the top of the charge, but most of the wood had been converted to charcoal. It filled two large, one medium, and one small barrel. We estimated that (using some wood on top to extend the fire) that this was sufficient for 6-8 forging sessions. It was an excellent yield.

The most positive thing was the quality of the charcoal. It had almost no fleas, and it was a pleasure to manage a fire. It was well sized, and made a hot roaring fire. I worked some large stock as well as some delicate forge welds. The fire was well behaved, and had little of the annoying smell and ash that the store bought lump charcoal did. It was so good that we would really like to have this kind of charcoal to use in the future.

But, the process of making it produces too much smoke. This just will not work in its present form. I suspect that some kind of TLUD (top lit up-draft) gasifier design is called for. More later on this idea.

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