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I Forge Iron

new portable coal forge project


woodsmith

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deiced to fabricate a new portable coal forge, needed to be light weight, handy to transport, assemble easily without wrenches, and have better capacity than my last portable wich has served well enough the last 10 years.  I welded up a tweyer from 3" stainless exhuast pipe scraps, terminating in a clamp sturdy enough to mount the blower without additional support,  made an ash dump hinged on 2 links of roller chain, tong rack and slide out stock support.  Pan is 17x 24 (14 gauge) so I added the little wings to the hearth to reduce coal spilling,  a brake rotor fire pot, ash dump and tweyer are bolted into place to keep the clinker breaker easily replaceable, the breaker is a bit of an experiment being made of coil spring and other alloyed med carbon steel, if it burns away too quickly it will be redone in stainless or something else, possibly cast either way I will learn something.  Legs are 1-1/4" tube  socketed into 1-1/2" .109 wall DOM for snug fit, 35" tall to the pan. Flat stock attached to  the bottom of the leg sockets is offset to the lowest point of the assembly, so that when the lgs are removed the forge sits flat and can be easily slid in/out of the car trunk or truck bed, may still add a rectangular slack tub,  still need to make good sized  winged bolts for legs and blower mount to improve appearance and assemble without wrenches.

 

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that is the real test of course, when you find out what you might have done differenly, almost got a chance to light it  last weekend but its been raining daily here, even flooding to the south of me, just waiting to  get some VHT header paint on the new steel before taking it outside, there will be fire by Saturday, rain or shine.

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On 7/16/2017 at 9:23 AM, George Geist said:

Looks like a nice one. Good work;)

Have you tried it out yet?

George

 

First fire results, its breaths really well less air leak in the tweyre or ash dump than most any forge Ive used, the clinker breaker is less restrictive, very little effort on the crank makes more than enough draft.  Getting the stock hot at a good rate. The header paint already seems superior to stove or grill paint Ive used in the past.  The first thing you might do different: blower is close enough to the firepot for high flames in a breeze to get a bit close to your cranking arm, workable, just not ideal, could have put the pot in the middle, just liked having it offset in the hearth, dont want the blower farther out, then it out balances the weight of the pan and gets tippy.  This will be resolved with a sheetmetal deflector, wanted to do that anyway as a windbreak, expect to use it almost entirely outdoors so have not planned on adding a full hood or sidedraft at this point.  Happy with the rig so far, taking it to a guild meeting tomorrow and a metal moot next weekend were we have a small bloom to consolidate, that will put the clinker breaker to a real test

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