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I Forge Iron

New wood forge


MrVader

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First of all, huge thank you to Glen for taking with me last night and giving me great advise. I built my first forge today out of bricks and it turned out fantastic. I'm including photos of the build. I originally intended to put an outside air source, but didn't acquire one so I modified what Mr Glen told me and basically built a rocket furnace instead. The sun was out bright today so it's hard to see, but this build will turn an open end wrench almost yellow in about 10 minutes. I used a claw hammer and spare bricks in place of an anvil because I'm impatient and couldn't wait to acquire one. I also just used sticks from my yard to fuel it. I lined a trench with brick and laid three brick hole side down for ash to fall through. then I left a hole two bricky up for the metal to through to access coals. I hope I explained it well enough and photos load. I'm headed back outside to admire it lol may not be pretty, but she works just fine for me!

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Claw hammers that are meant for driving nails have soft heads. The steel can deform, even mushroom.  Hammer head pieces can spall off and sometimes could hit you. The worst case would be losing an eye. I suggest you pick up a cross pein hammer or engineers' hammer at a big box hardware store. (like Lowes etc.). They are not that expensive. Vaughn is a good make & there are many other makers, too. In a pinch use a ball pein hammer. They are used all over the third world. The head is hardened steel.

SLAG.

Wear eye protection please.

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Oh yes I know. I did wear eye protection and will be getting a cross pein and something actually suitable for striking metal on, but I was impatient and couldn't wait until my next trip to town. It doesn't appear as though my photos have loaded though. I'll retry Monday from a computer 

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Add air through a 3/4 or 1 inch pipe located near the bottom of the fire. Fuel does not make the fire hot, air makes the fire hot. You only need as much air as the amount of heat that is needed. No reason to waste fuel.

With the air added you should be able to achieve welding heat.

 

Let me re-read this again, You loose stacked some old used bricks to build a forge, then cleaned up the sticks from the yard to use as fuel, and have a working forge at ZERO, ZIP, NADA, coat, that is NO money invested !!  Excellent !!

Play in the fire while you plan the perfect forge. No one ever said you could only have one forge. (grin)

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Well DONE! If you fill the gaps in the bricks with dirt it'll draw air better and make a hotter fire. If you move your opening up one brick it'll get your work away from the draft so it won't cause scale as easily.

That is as good as the spirit of blacksmithing gets, scrounged materials, good working forge and clean the yard. Everybody's happy and you get to learn a new craft while making cool stuff for gifts, tools, etc. Absolutely PRIMO!

You have put one big smile on my face.

Frosty The Lucky.

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8 hours ago, Glenn said:

Let me re-read this again, You loose stacked some old used bricks to build a forge, then cleaned up the sticks from the yard to use as fuel, and have a working forge at ZERO, ZIP, NADA [cost], that is NO money invested !!  Excellent !!

 I think MrVader wins the "Unstoppable Newbie of the Year" award!

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10 hours ago, Glenn said:

Add air through a 3/4 or 1 inch pipe located near the bottom of the fire. 

As soon as I locate something to use as an air supply I'm definitely doing that. I just used the hole I made for air supply to put the product in for right now and let the wind blow through my "ash grate" to keep it hot. Lol I'm going Tuesday after work to start looking for a large chunk of metal use for an anvil. The bricks I was using break too easily. But definitely works good enough to shape the metal I have access to at the moment

This was the original design, but without airflow going through the pipe on the bottom left, it was just heating up to orange/yellow, and the piece I had higher want getting hot enough. So I just replaced my airflow pipe with a piece of metal and used it as my forge until I find a blower of some type

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9 hours ago, Frosty said:

Well DONE! If you fill the gaps in the bricks with dirt it'll draw air better and make a hotter fire. If you move your opening up one brick it'll get your work away from the draft so it won't cause scale as easily.

That is as good as the spirit of blacksmithing gets, scrounged materials, good working forge and clean the yard. Everybody's happy and you get to learn a new craft while making cool stuff for gifts, tools, etc. Absolutely PRIMO!

You have put one big smile on my face.

Frosty The Lucky.

My next project is sealing the outside with clay I have. I left it just brick case I had to move anything around during the first fire. Thanks for the advice on the scale creating problem, I had to slightly modify it due to having no mechanical airflow and ended up using a much lower hole than originally intended for the time being but will be raising it before long. 

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I've use virtually the same "furnace" set up for my casting, it lives outside my forge so I can use the same bellows. Excellent series of pics, displays what many have proported to on so many posts. Anyone can get started without spending a penny on equipment, fuel or stock.

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All you need to make an air blast is a sack, cardboard, box, etc. a little tape and a piece of pipe. A cardboard box bellows is maybe the easiest to use and super simple to make. Find a box with a lid that telescopes over the bottom, lots of file boxes are like this. If you can't fine one make one, just a couple slits and some tape makes the inside box. Easy peasy, No?

Then are the valves! Oh my :o! A hole in the box and a piece of cardboard a little larger than the hole taped on one edge above the hole. That's it for the intake, it can be pretty large say 3-4" square is usually plenty. The inlet valve is to prevent air from blowing out when you're blowing the fire but let air in when you lift the bellows. (charge the bellows)

The outlet valve is slightly more demanding it has to fit inside the air pipe OR make a little box so there's room for the valve and connect the air pipe to the little adapter.  The outlet valve prevents the bellows from drawing air in from the fire when you're charging the bellows.

The ONLY place you need steel pipe is the last 6-12" up to and into the forge itself. The air flow will keep the supply line cool when in operation rubber hose is perfect to connect from the bellows to the blast pipe.

That's IT for air and heck, you can simple dig the trench you lined with cinder blocks farther out from the forge, cover it like you did in the forge and hook your bellows up directly. Get it a couple few feet away and it won't catch fire. The other benefit of doing it this way is it makes the outlet valve much easier to make.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Ever open and close a box where one half slides over the other half and feel the air resistance? Add an intake valve to let air in when you spread the halves and prevent it exhausting when you close them. Put one on the outlet end in the reverse pattern to stop it from drawing air in through the blow pipe. You know how a flap valve works yes? A quick search for "flap valve" will provide a LOT of examples.

But no, no blue print.

Frosty The Lucky.

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