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I Forge Iron

BBQ pit forge, need help


genesaika

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So my father in-law has this little charcoal BBQ pit and he said I could have it. I want to take it and turn it into a solid fuel forge, but im not really sure how.

I have access to sand( mixed with rocks), clay( red I believe), roof shingles, and coals from a burn pile ( only sees wood and cardboard). So my plan is to make a side blast JABOD forge and I have no idea how. 

Im figuring I can line the inside of the BBQ with shingles, then fill it with sand, and pack it with clay. The air tube I will have to buy im sure, but what are my options? Also, what can I use for the blower, preferably that doesn't need to be plugged in as I have to run 150 feet of cord to plug in right now.

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So are we talking asphalt shingles or clay roofing tiles? Asphalt burns. First source your self a pipe from 3/4 to 1” ID ( 3/4” schedule 40 pipe is actually 7/8”) you want the top of the pipe 3-4” below the hearth (top of the forge). Typically to allow long stock to pass there the fire we work from the side, so deside which side your going to face and bring in your air supply. You can either cut a hole in the side or just angle the pipe in from the side. Now I like  using cheap double acting inflatable bed pumps 

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I'd just call that an old BBQ, a pit gives me visions of something in the ground or a reasonable facsimile there of. Lose the rocks, sift them out. HOT rocks can do BAD things, things you might have to have surgically removed B-A-D.

Don't make this complicated plain old garden dirt works just fine. Fill it, pack it lightly and scoop out a channel for the fire. Place a piece of pipe horizontally an inch or so off the bottom of the channel and hook it to air. 

That's IT, all there is nothing more. Forget refractories, completely unnecessary and what's with shingles? Put them on a roof or something not IN a forge! 

There's a trap human nature tends to suck us ALL into and that's the one that tells us to use a thing because we have it. Just because you have something doesn't mean you NEED it. Honest that's coming from a guy with I don't know how many things I have that CAN be used but will probably cost my estate money to haul off. 

Heck, you don't NEED the BBQ to make a forge, I see a couple in the background of the pic. I'd use the wheelbarrow to haul stuff but they make dandy large scale and portable forges. There looks to be a round pan on the pile, if it's not plastic or galvy it'd make a dandy forge. You only need something to hold a fire and most every solid fuel forge I've ever seen was just a hole at a convenient height with air plumbed to it. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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This one cost me $10 at Academy sports. I like it because of the volume and outlet in the base. 

Now traditinaly the tuyere comes in on your weak side and the air supply is their as well, I work backwards as I like my tuyere on my weak side but my pump on the strong side. As I already have the finds in my weak side, why should I put them down to pump air? 

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From this point I would test my clay for %. Put a hand full in a jar, fill 2/3 with water and shake. The next day the sand will be on the bottom, the silt in the middle and clay on top. 1/3 clay and 1/2 or more sand is ideal for adobe but your clay strait works well if you don’t plan to use coal. Form a a trench and mound like so

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Charcoal likes small fires, about 6” of hot steel. That’s about all you can forge befor you run out of heat. This forge will heat 1” handily.

I would just use adobe, if you have at least 2” thickness the shingles should be fine. 

 

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Im planning on mostly using charcoal, since this will just be to get me by until I can finish making my gas forge. 

Im either going to buy a bag of pool sand, sift the sand I have now (we have like 50+ bags of it from when we had that bad flood last year), or dig up some around the house. 

I was at my local store and they have bags of natural lump charcoal, supposedly not briquettes. Would this be a suitable fuel? How long would 25lbs last?

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Some updates this morning. I got it about halfway filled up and managed to get my tuyere in. Currently it's raining so im waiting for that to slack up some before I get back to it. Those sand bags I have are about an 80/20 mix rock/sand, so sifting it is a slow process, I've gone through four bags already.

As a warning for anyone thinking of sifting sand like this... Don't unless you really want to save money. If I had known it would take me this long I would have spent the $5 on a bag at the hardware store, I have well more invested in time than $5 already and im only halfway there.

On the plus side, this build has cost me a total of nothing so far. I will be buying a cheap hair dryer since I can't seem to find one of those nice hand pumps... Or any air mattress pump for that matter.

Edit: I should mention that after taking the picture I realized my tuyere was off center, so I moved the end back a few inches. Also my tuyere is 3/4 black iron pipe left over from my Mikey burner and my bevel jig, just happened to be enough for this project.

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Do they have house furnaces in your neck of the woods?   Super efficient house furnaces have an exhaust assist blower, at least all the ones I've owned did. They are usually not what gets a furnace replaced and so a local HVAC company might have a scrap pile with some for free---or a box of doughnuts; if you explain what you are doing.

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Im fairly certain we do not have furnaces down here, we barely even need heat. My plan is to upgrade to a more efficient blower, but the hair dryer should function just fine once I take out the heating element.

In other news, I got it built up and tossed in some newspaper, cardboard, and briquettes we had around and fired it up. Ended up fighting it a bit because everything is wet, but I got it burning well enough to mostly dry out the mud and sand. Even tested out my tuyere with some good old lung power, being cautious not to breath in the smoke. Got that fire blowing a good foot high before I decided it was time for some lunch.

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This is how I control my charcoal forge. I found even on low the hairdryer was too much air. Had a 2" LB that just happened to fit my hairdryer perfect and my forge is plumbed in with 2" so it works for me. From zero air to raging forge fleas in a flick of the wrist

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Im pretty happy with it, even burning briquettes. I got my test piece of 3/8 all thread up to temp, flattened out and then burn the crap out of the flattened part. Took me all of like 20 minutes to go from dead cold to burning off a chunk of metal.

For now im keeping the hair dryer on low and only blowing into the tuyere at a sharp angle. Once I got the angle bit figured out I was able to keep my test piece in the fire for a long while without burning it.

My next task is to set up a rig to hold the hair dryer where I can adjust the flow.

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It takes a lot less time to reheat stock than bring it to forging temp in the first place (800f or so back up) and the second time the steel moves more because most the time you didn’t left the middle get done

If I had realized you were using th sand for filler instead of cutting the clay with it I would not have suggested shifting it.

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Ahh what is that all thread plated with?  Looks like zinc chromate to me. You may want to review the safety pages on NOT USING PLATED MATERIALS IN THE FORGE!

Of course many people do; I only know two personally that had issues: one spent a week in the hospital with no insurance and the other had contributing issues that resulted in his death.      

IN RUST WE TRUST!    Words to live by!

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Thank you Thomas for reminding me. It was the only long piece I had on hand to test out. This weekend I'll be picking up some 1/2 inch or so( have to test it out) stock to make some tongs from and then I'll be ready to go.

My projects for the next few weeks are: build my anvil stand, mount the anvil, build tongs, make nails, use nails to add bands to my anvil stand and then work on making my blower hands free. Once I have that completed I'll be practicing my butt off making whatever I can.

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