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I Forge Iron

unconventional Forge Fuels


MadHammerForge

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Diamonds are harder to start though.

 

Cementation of Iron and Steel does mention using them for case hardening successfully----("Dear I was going to give you diamonds for Valentine's day but used them to up the carbon content on this knife I was making; sure you can look at it, dear?  Dear? DEAR!   AHHHHHHHHHG!  thud.")

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It's been done.  With solar though, you either end up with itty bitty hot spots that have to be carefully adjusted due to focal length issues, movement of the sun, wind, etc, or great big contraptions that have to be carefully adjusted due to focal length issues, movement of the sun, wind, etc. (plus my wife said no more miniature solar death rays.....)

 

Also, they get a little too hot. It's like playing with a homemade arc furnace, normal refractory too close to the heat just doesn't hold up well.  Incidentally, there's a fun thought. Not as many casters over here, but anybody ever play with forging using a homemade arc furnace?  I've seen a couple of unwieldy looking rigs before, never tried making one. Heat control would be a righteous pain for one......and electric shock....and........

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Solar is constrained by the total power available per sq inch; so your fresnel lens could produce a hot spot but won't heat up a lot.

 

When I first moved out to New Mexico I thought a lot about solar and designed a forge based on an old Mother Earth magazine---it used 1' sq mirror tiles and had a sun follower circuit.  My forge would be a trough so that the sun could track along it a ways in between repositioning.  I started looking into getting stuff to build it and then lived through my first NM spring with 80 mph straight line winds.  No way anything I could build would survive that.  And building a shelter for it would be taking away my smithy building. So I gave it up.

 

 

One other problem to mention:  oxidation, (scaling), would be much worse as there are no fuels to scavenge O2.

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I really think induction units are going to be big in the near future. Clean, fast, and no venting needed. I use ours at work for doing silver soldering, heat treating, warming parts, etc. They are a lot faster than the torch. With the test coil I heated about 3" of a 1.25" dia bar to yellow in about 15 seconds.

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It's been done.  With solar though, you either end up with itty bitty hot spots that have to be carefully adjusted due to focal length issues, movement of the sun, wind, etc, or great big contraptions that have to be carefully adjusted due to focal length issues, movement of the sun, wind, etc. (plus my wife said no more miniature solar death rays.....)

 

Also, they get a little too hot. It's like playing with a homemade arc furnace, normal refractory too close to the heat just doesn't hold up well.  Incidentally, there's a fun thought. Not as many casters over here, but anybody ever play with forging using a homemade arc furnace?  I've seen a couple of unwieldy looking rigs before, never tried making one. Heat control would be a righteous pain for one......and electric shock....and........

 

Thanks for the reply , I guess I will not be trying solar . Ones mind dose wander playing what if I try "fill in the blank "

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Arkie: Does drying the cow chips before brewing make better coffee? Good grief this brings up the questions. Do you add milk to cow chip coffee or add the coffee to the milk? Does . . .Uh. . Er. . Nevermind. Do . . .Ugh!

 

No MORE STOP STOP! I just visualized trying to get a double shot of cow chip espresso without wearing rain gear!!

 

Oh the VERY idea Arkie! How could you? Now I have to figure out how to poke out my mind's eye! I'll get you for this!

 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Hey, Frosty,

 

When we used to go camping/hunting in Texas when I was a kid, my Dad used to pile up a big heap of cow chips (DRY ONES) and build a hot fire.  They really DO get hot!.  We'd cook steaks or weiners over the fire.  If we added mesquite wood to the fire it was even better flavor!!!!!

 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!......... :)

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You're sticking to your cow chips . . . story eh?

 

Yeah, there have been plenty of 3rd. world blacksmithing videos posted showing everything from wood to straw and critter pies used for fuel. We used to use dry road apples for fires in the Mojave desert. They burned nice and hot but didn't make sparks or last too long so we didn't have to worry too much about lighting the chaparral on fire. All the good camp sites had plenty nice dry road apples available folk like us out riding and camping you know. Baily's and coffee is an almost must around the camp fire.

 

Good memories. <sigh>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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The local Brick factory here (Belgium) used brown coal, which they pulverized. The brown coal dust then was transported (using a pipe) with air nozzles every couple of meters (to keep the dust flowing).

 

The pressurized dust then was ignited and burned with a forced air/venturi combination. They heated very large kilns this way.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Would that be lignite coal?   A step closer to bituminous than peat. (Peat => Lignite => Bituminous => Anthracite)  I had a friend who used to collect amber from lignite deposits to investigate insects in it.

​Lignite indeed.

 

Regards,

HDB

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