Forging in cold weather

[jj2k]

Here in Texas we don't get a lot of days where it is cold enough to need much extra heat once the forge is lit. However we do get a few days that require a bit more than just a flannel shirt with sleeves. I save all of the sticks from the trees in my yard and any other scrap wood that comes along through the spring summer and fall. I'll burn that wood in my cleaned out coal forge if I am not using it. I keep the blast low and the wood burns well. That'll raise the temp in my uninsulated shop a good 20 to 30 degrees. Makes it downright bearable when I am not in a forging mode on a real cold day. I have on occasion had to add just a bit of coal here and there to that wood and that makes a really big difference.

[ThomasPowers]

If you are building your own stove; look into an apartment water heater rather than a barrel; much thicker metal, makes welding on it easier and they last longer and many of them are trashed when the elements burn out as it may be cheaper to replace it than to pay a plumber to come replace the elements...

[Leah]

Pete and Mark,

Bob, my spoiled dog, does love to find crawfish heads a few days after we cook some up. Makes for some really nice puppy kisses.

[pete46]

LEAH:CRAWDAD BREATH YUM!


FOR THOSE OF YA'LL BURNING SCRAP[ya probablly know] be careful burning scrap lumber inside ,most has chemicals ie.. OSMOS.

IT WILL KILL!!!!!!!!!!:(

[the_sandy_creek_forge]

Hm... never thought of the water heater tanks. Fortunately the barrel stove is already done and made for me (short of a heat exchanger).

I'd thought about the barrel-in-a-barrel heat exchanger (stack robber). So I did up some math just a bit ago to see how the numbers all compare (hold onto your seats kids. this might be an interesting ride!).

The following measurements are accurate to withing a few square inches (i didn't account for material thicknesses, just went with nominal size) and are figured based on a barrel stove using 36" long barrels top and bottom.

If I use a grease drum with a 15 inch diameter, inside of a 36" long barrel, i end up with the fan blowing over 1695 sq. inches of heated steel. If I use 17 pieces of 1" exhaust pipe, i get somewhere around 1921 sq. inches. Now if I bump up to using 2" exhaust pipe, I'll get 3843 sq. inches of heated surface, more than double the surface area of the grease-barrel-in-an-oil-barrel technique.

Using a pattern where the pipes are laid out with one pipe through the dead center, and two concentric circles of pipe working out towards the edge of the barrel with the pipes seperated by 45 degrees (hope that makes sense), i easily have enough room for 2" diameter pipe.

If I bump up to 3" diameter pipe i get a surface area of 5765 sq. inches. Now I have to stop and wonder. I can PROBABLY fit that many pipes in some type of pattern on the drum, but at what point do i start losing efficiency. If I draw off too much heat from the exhaust, will I still get enough draw up the chimney (without a ridiculously tall chimney)? Also at which point can the stove no longer pass enough heat through the heat exchanger to keep it hot? These are unfortunately questions that I don't really even know where to look for formulas to solve them with.

Knowing how much heat one of these stoves makes (ah, such fond memories of winter scout camp) and just standing back and looking at the whole of it, I think that I could still run the 2" pipe and keep some type of efficiency. The 3" flues I am not so sure about.

I do know that before I fire the stove up, I need to make a couple grates for the bottom and throw some sand in to keep it from burning through so quickly.

Some other thoughts I am pondering:
-a thermostat to kick the fan on and off when the flues reach certain temperatures.
-the louvers for directing the heat to where i am, maybe even two sets of louvers for vertical and horizontal adjustment (thanks for the idea on that one Frosty!)
-exactly what style of fireplace tools I want to forge to go along with my barrel stove

Thoughts anyone?

-Aaron @ the SCF

[the_sandy_creek_forge]

Thought this might make a better visual aid for anyone who is not sure what we might be talking about.



That's almost exactly like the one I'll use (except my door's a bit smaller and I don't think it's a Vogelsang.) The flues/heat exchanger/ stack robber will run through the upper barrel.

-Aaron @ the SCF

EDIT: oh yeh, and mine's not pretty grey. It's beautiful rusty brown ;)

[mtforge]

My shop isn't heated full time so it takes too long to heat up. So I heat me up instead. I have propane piped into the shop from an outside tank to a manifold to run the forges, propane/oxy torch and heaters. I've mounted a infrared heater on a stand and hook it to the manifold with propane hosed with propane rated quick disconnects. I dress warm and point the heater at me.

[Glenn]

When I built our home, I built a double drum stove and used it as the only heat source for 7 years, including a winter at -20*F (very unusual for this area). We usually burned 15 to 20 cords of wood per season and stayed warm.

We monitored the stack temperature as it entered the masonry chimney. anything below 250*F and it made creosote, above 400-425*F and the heat was wasted up the chimney.

After several different ways to extract more heat from the stove, I found the KISS method (Keep It Simple and Stupid) works best. Cleaning the stove and leaving the right amount of ash in the bottom drum for insulation was not a problem, I built a rake with 2-1/2 inch teeth.

NEVER leave the stove operational and unattended. The ashes have had enough fire left to restart on the 4th day after it was shut down.

Your mileage may vary as each stove is an individual creature with different personalities.

[mike-hr]

I get up early and aim the reddi-blaster just under the platen table. a couple hours and the cast iron soaks up btu's enough to radiate out until the gas forge or woodstove kicks in.

[Glenn]

Sandy
Rather than round pipe, think of a rectangular cross section. The circumference C= pi x D is 6.28 where the 2 inch square is 8 inches. If you reconfigure the 2 inch square to 1 inch wide and 4 inches long, you now get 10 inches of outside distance (60% more).

From the internet:
As a rule of thumb, it takes about five square feet of optimized surface area, in a heat exchanger, to lower exit temperatures from the stove about 250

[Frosty]

Will you get the same heat exchange from a vertical configuration as you get from the horizontal configuration in the stove?


Another question, is radiant heat any better than trying to warm all the air in the shop?

I thought I answered this one yesterday but it didn't show up on my end.

There are pluses and minuses to any particular design. The vertical takes up less floor space and elevates the hot iron more so the radiant reaches more places. A vertical won't hold as much wood because you can't put the door very high or you let the smoke out stoking it.

Radiant vs. heat exchange. The upside of radiant is it doesn't heat the air, it heats objects in line of sight and they heat the air. This means a room with a radiant heat source will feel warm even if the air is outside cold. A downside is radiant is line of sight so anything out of sight of the stove will be in the cold.

There is a downside to putting lots of exchange tubes in the stack robber and that's creosote buildup. It's going to form almost no matter what but the more tubes the harder it is to clean out and the faster it forms.

Typically you make a scraper that slides over the tubes inside the robber. It's attached to a rod that extends through the front of the robber and you clean the tubes by sliding the rod out and in every so often. The more and smaller tubes you have, the harder it is to move and the more often you have to do it, up to several times a day.

Some friends and I made a number of these things when they took them off the market. We didn't do any comparison except in gross customer satisfaction. The grease barrel in the drum made more people happy as it's about zero maint, works well and with a little bit of grill makes a wonderful glove drier and leftover warmer.

If you use sq or rec tubing weld it in on the corner or creosote and crud will accumulate on the flat really fast. Also, most sq or rec will be a lot heavier wall than say exhaust tubing. The thinner the steel the better a heat exchanger it is. Thick steel HOLDS heat and you want it to give it up fast.

As a rule of thumb in a shop a single 55gl. drum is plenty for 500-700 sq/ft in sub zero. A double barrel is plenty for up to maybe 1,500 sq/ft if the ceiling isn't too high.

Putting the grease barrel in the second barrel will speed the shop warm up considerably and heats a larger space or higher ceilings. It also allows you to blow warm where you want it.

Frosty

[jayco]

Last winter I had too many days when it was just too cold out there to forge anything.

In mid-winter we have lots of days in the 10 to 40 degree Farenheit range . I can 'bundle up' and work in those temps, but it just ain't comfortable......so,

I decided to 'winterize' my forging shop a little.

In summer, (1st pic), the shop has an 8 ft.x 10ft. opening on the south side. I nailed 4 pieces of old rusty metal roofing over the front and moved enough of my 'resource pile' so I could close the door.

Actually, I'd been putting the metal up in winter and removing it in summer for some years, but last year I got too busy and didn't get it done.

Even with the door shut, there is still plenty of ventilation, since the shop is not sealed around the rafters.....and my cats seem to be able to go in and out as they please without using the door.

This shop is only 8ft. x 16ft., so the coal forge is all the heat that is required in 'reasonable' weather.


This year I added some 6 in. stove pipe and a homemade forge hood to get rid of most of the smoke .......should have done that years ago!

The cost: 0 All scrap materials.

This little shed is not worth spending any money on for real improvements.

This spring I plan to build a new shop........if everything 'goes as planned',

My wife came by the other day, and said "You need a new shop!"

Yep......I agree,.....but I'm gonna see if I can sqeeze one more winter out of this one.

James

[Frosty]

I don't suppose there's room for the pot belly stove inside eh? I hope you find room for it in the new shop even if it's just for folks to come by on cold days, put their feet up and swap lies over hot coffee.

I'll be putting a foot rail by mine for just that purpose.

Lastly; congratulations for finding a woman who appreciates a man's need for a larger shop. May you two last a long, long time.

Frosty

[hammerkid]

I ain`t blacksmithed in the winter yet but in the early morginings it ahs been pretty cold so I been wearing long sleeves. I will wear layers so when i get ever thing warm i can shed layers as I need to. Hopefully I get my shop finshed before it gets winter here .

[matt87]

For now, I just put a jumper on under my overshirt. After a fwe minutes of pumping the bellows or swinging a hammer, I'm not too sure it is winter...

[JIMBO420]

I was thinking of building a lean-to in my backyard to use a smithin shop. Nothing to massive, but big enough to move around in comfortably

[Archie Zietman]

I just put on huge layers of wool and cotton sweaters, big boots with several pairs of socks, and a hat, and I'm fine. I love the winter! Forging is really intense then!
Merry Being,
stay warm,
Archie

[Ferrous Beuler]

2 cords of mixed hardwood and an airtight stove will get me through until march:)

Mark, Sweet shop!
Mind if I move in 'till march?
I don't eat much, and I'll make sure the stove is always stoked when you want to come out and forge a bit...:rolleyes:Dan

[RainsFire]

I work in a lean-to on the side of a barn, and my gass forge heats up the space really quickly..