Thought I would share a couple of pictures of my forge fire.  The fire is fueled by coke and the surrounds and base are stone / cement.  The chimney is galvanised commercial vent ducting.  The fan is a new commercial model and the main cost.  I got the steel tue nozzle from ebay - its cooled by the circulation of water through the hoses you can see.  The 'tank' is a plastic storage container and holds the water used to cool the nozzle.  The fan blows air into the nozzle and is regulated by the shutter I made.  Hope you find this useful.  Mark

I don't know anything about forges but I think it looks cool.

I like it--a LOT.  I could easily talk my wife into sponsoring something like that as long as I put a grate somewhere and told her it was a BBQ for her.

Can you toss out a little info on the blower you chose?  Source for that one?  I've been poking around regarding blowers and haven't seen that one pop up in searches.

 

 

Kozzy, check this out.  http://www.aircontrolindustries.com/applications/blacksmith-forge-fans/ The site has a USA section too.  My fan is the VBL6/3.  In the UK the cost was £190.   The company were very helpful.  Mark 

33 minutes ago, markirwin said:

Kozzy, check this out.  http://www.aircontrolindustries.com/applications/blacksmith-forge-fans/ The site has a USA section too.  My fan is the VBL6/3.  In the UK the cost was £190.   The company were very helpful.  Mark 

Thanks for more than you think.  The US site had air knife systems in addition to blowers and for work I was just designing a piece of equipment that needed one--was about to do a web search to find a supplier 

Can only see one hose, how does that work for cooling?, pardon my ignorance.

I was wondering the same thing.

Theoretically you don't need flow, just a single line for steam to escape and make-up water to enter that is above the level of the nose/exposed part of the tuyere tube.  Not the way I'd personally do it but as long as pressure never builds up the internal temp is going to hover around the boiling point of water.

Guys there are 2 hoses I just failed to get them in the shots - one from the bottom of the nozzle the other from the top. Cooling is sufficient and natural convection does give good flow but the water does get v hot. And no I haven't  tried making coffee with it yet!

Yes, now that you mention it, I can just see the bottom hose in the first 2 shots. Nice set up. How loud is the blower? Do you let it run all the time, or is there a switch mounted somewhere?        Dave

The blower is very quiet. It is connected via a speed controller switch which I set the desired speed on. I then use the shutter to close the air supply when I am at the anvil and open it when heating metal.  I started without the shutter but the motor is rated for continuous  use so more sensible to let it run. Hope this helps. Mark

Are the rocks in the top zone fire safe?  I've had a bad experience with rocks in a campfire ring abut 45 years ago and it stuck with me...

9 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Are the rocks in the top zone fire safe?  I've had a bad experience with rocks in a campfire ring abut 45 years ago and it stuck with me...

I was thinking the same thing.

It doesn't get hot there but know what you mean.  Bottom is fire brick and we'll insulated with detritus!