Forge Mk.II

[Corsac]

Well, my first forge was an old wheel from a chevy in the field at my neighbour's place with legs welded to it. It was oversized and awkward, and not particularly well made because I wanted to try building one sooner rather than later, but it was also mid winter and the cold pushed me to work fast and not well. I decided when I recently picked up my anvil (upgraded from an I-beam with a plate welded to it) that I should make something a bit nicer and more efficient. So in the last few days I've had off I gathered various bits of scrap from around the garage and property. After much collecting, the death of many valiant zip-cuts and a lot of flux core welding wire (it doesn't make very nice welds) I managed to build a new forge.
I'm not sure what the tank I used  was originally for, but it had been laying in the rubble of an old homestead that had once been the center of this property. Also nice to see that there's a decent amount of other scrap steel out in that field.

 

Anyway, I tried it out today and found it works pretty well, though the chimney may need some modifications in order to draw better, since I got quite a bit of smoke coming out of the opening as well. I'm not totally if there's such a thing as oversized when it comes to chimneys and flues?. Other things i found were that I may need to replace or reinforce the 'firepot', which is just the bottom of the tank. The width varies in some places due to corrosion from having sat in a field for so many years. Luckily the top half is in much better shape, and more uniformly thick, so if it comes to that I'll just cut and swap. I'll probably cut another opening later on as well, so I can work on longer bits of steel, but I'm feeling pretty good today now that I've tried it and it works. I attempted a knife from a piece of rusted bar, and an axe head from a bolt that used to hold track pads to a D8 Cat. The knife turned out well, the axe head not so well, but it still felt great to look at it and realize I made this.

 

Any comments or suggestions about the design?

 

[VaughnT]

That's not an axe, that's a hardy-mounted hot cut!

 

Great work.  Keep at it, focus on the details and you'll be in high cotton before too long!

[George Geist]

In order for your smokestack to draw properly make sure it's at least 2' higher than the highest part of your roof if indoors. Outside like you are try to funnel it up as high as you can anyway in order not to get cinders all over your neck and down your shirt :)

[Corsac]

That's not an axe, that's a hardy-mounted hot cut!

 

That's what I started thinking near the end. Think I'll modify it a bit and do that, since part of the trouble I was having with it was that I just couldn't chisel a gap into the steel without it flying away on me. Guess my next project will be to make some other hardy tools as well.

 

 

In order for your smokestack to draw properly make sure it's at least 2' higher than the highest part of your roof if indoors. Outside like you are try to funnel it up as high as you can anyway in order not to get cinders all over your neck and down your shirt :)

 

Yeah, I am intending to build a smithy of some kind around this soon, have a mill attachment for my chainsaw that I've been wanting to put to use. Luckily I think there's plenty more scrap around that I could use to extend the chimney to whatever length I need.