Ive just begun to dabble in longer blade forging and want a longer, thinner fire to accommodate for  my charcoal, and the blades.

 

What ive been thinking of doing is switching to a forge similar to this one:

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Does anyone have experience with how well a pipe/line air supply works verses the normal single air source point?

 

 

I'm getting ready to need something like this myself, to heat-treat a short sword... just to get a complete normalization and then get it hardened.

 

You do not need a forge like this for forging. You can only work a few inches at a time, so this would definitely be overkill.

 

Thanks for the link to that picture. I plan to use charcoal with a 2" pipe drilled with two staggered rows of 1/2" holes over about a 2' length. I've got a crank blower, but also a couple higher powered back-ups should I need more air than it can produce.

 

Still got a lot of grinding and finishing to do, but I'm getting closer.

What should i do to temper and heat treat longer blades then? set up an outdoor forge or secondary forge entirely?

Your temp and h/t forge is fine

The forge for normal work needs to be smaller(long heats waste fuel cause U can only hammer so much per heat]& more manageable.

 hope this helps.

I imagine a forge like that would be nice for long bends.  It would have been amazing for those dead eyes I mentioned earlier.  As it was we had to heat the things at least twice for all 4 major bends, and the fastest we managed to make one was 40 minutes.  Longer heats would have probably halved the time that it took to make them.  I know it doesn't really pertain to the original post, but I like the idea of that forge.

A long forge like this can be quite handy for a few projects, but like the photo shows, they are quickly built and don't need to be fancy.  The majority of forge work doesn't require anything that long, but it's good to have the idea in mind for those times when it would be beneficial.

Here is what i put together yesterday.

 

 

Nice workable heat treating forge. Now put the air pipe somewhere handy and restack most of the brick under the forge table. Then build a forge for FORGING the blades, seriously heating more than 3-4" of the blade will only damage what you can't forge and you can't really forge more than a few inches at a time, even if it is a long blade. Sure, there will be ties you'll need to heat a longer section or the whole blade, say for straightening or adjusting the belly, etc. but just put a little more fuel on the mound and give it more air, move the blade around if necessary.

 

Long forges have their place and it's an important one but NOT for shaping the blade or other general forge work. For that you want a much smaller and more controlled fire. you CAN make a large fire over a pretty small air grate say 8-9 sq/in area. Just mound the fuel higher and give it more air, it'll get as big or bigger than a man can handle if that's what you want/need.

 

Frosty The Lucky.