Gents! My brother recently moved a couple states away from me, bought his dream home which happens to be a log cabin. Well my brother and I have been smithing together since highschool, and he begged me to take our fisher anvil and large forge with him to smith items for his new home. Being a family man, and since he has saves my butt on more than one occasion I felt obliged to let him take the items with him, now I have to set up our smaller forge we bought a few years back. This forge doesn't have a built in fire pot, kind of like a larger version of a rivet forge. it does have the cut out sides for long pieces, but I was trying to figure out how to make it work, work well that is. So yesterday I added a heat shield in front of the blower and I put refractory in the bottom and built it up to the tyre, now to create the fire pot should I simply use fire brick standing on their side or should I try to create a fire pot out of refractory? Any and all help is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

Sounds like you've got a flat-bottomed forge that doesn't have a fire pot.

 

The lack of a pot doesn't effect the forge, but it does mean you need to use bricks to contain and shape the fire.  This is actually very beneficial as it allows you to change the shape of the fire whenever you need.  

 

With the clay on the bottom, you can create a small depression around the grate, and then build up around that with your bricks.  Excellent way of forging.

Thanks vaughn, I figured it would work alright because I think I remember you talking about that in another post, I just hope I can get good temps out of it because if I can't I will have to build another one

It'll do just fine.  If you were able to get the heat you wanted before, the same fuel and air mix will produce the same results.  I'm honestly thinking about foregoing a fire pot for my next solid-fuel forge simply because they aren't a must-have.  My first SF forge was like you describe and it worked wonderfully.  Should never have sold that bugger!  :(

Vaughn! I just got done using my flat bottom forge with firebricks creating the fire pot!!! I love it! You were right I changed the shape of the fire pot three times during forging and saved A LOT of fuel, it reached welding temps quicker than my older forge did with a fire pot!

Awesome!!

gotta love it when a plan comes together.

I know! I was worried that I was gonna have to hit the fab shop and pull a bigger forge out of my butt lol

you don't need a huge forge to get the job done. infact the smaller ones are more efficient. using less fuel to get to temp.

It's called a "Duck's nest" forge and a personal favorite of mine when I'm using solid fuel. Good to see you have it under control. I understand the anxiety you can feel when having to change from something you know works to something new. You're golden on this one.

 

Frosty The Lucky.