Firebrick based forge?

[Andrew Collington]

Hi all,

I've been given a bunch of firebricks, a dozen of them quite large (190mm x 230mm x 45mm) and heavy and 90 or so of them smaller brick size (175mm x 90mm x 70mm) - would they make a suitable base and sides for a side-blast forge?  I was thinking of just making a box (like the excellent jabod's shown on the forum), placing some of the larger size ones on the bottom (maybe 2x3), put the smaller bricks around the inside of the box as a wall, get a tuyère in there somehow (maybe between bricks or possibly through one of the brick holes if I find a small enough pipe), and then fill the basin left by the bricks with coal.

Does that at all sound reasonable?  Can I do it just on bricks or would I need to pack dirt around anything?

Cheers,

Andy

 

[JHCC]

Are those actual firebricks? They don’t look like the ones I’ve seen in the US, but maybe things are different in the UK.

As for using them in a forge, one of the great things about a JABOD is the ability to reshape the fire pit to suit the job at hand.  Assuming these are indeed firebricks, they could be good for bulking out the corners of the box, while leaving room for the actual dirt. The flat ones would certainly be good for lining the bottom.

[Andrew Collington]

The 90 or so bricks I got from an old ex-farrier (who I got my anvil from), and he said they were firebricks so I guess I'll just have to trust him on that one.  I was pretty sure the others were firebricks... right up until you questioned it  But assuming they are, it sounds like it could work out so I'll give it a go!

With the reshaping or the pit; I'm assuming the premise to that if you wanted a bit of a longer heat you could widen the pit length a bit (be more oblong than round).  But would anything need to be done with the tuyère to enable that?  Or does it being in different shaped pit make the air circulate in the right direction to push out the heat correctly?

Ah, just looked at the thread at 

and it appeared to answer my question about the pit shape and tuyère - sorry about that, I should have investigated a bit more first.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Those acualy look like CSB oe CEB’s (compresed soil/earth bricks) and should be just fine, cement bricks based bricks are another matter. 

Your just building a box  to raise a hole in the ground up to anvil hight, so have at it. 

so their are several ways to approach this, one could simply stack the bricks in a square like making a raised garden bed, fill the middle with ruble, gravel, sand or compacted earth topping it with the tiles. Leaving a 2 brick lip (assuming they are 2” thick) then one can fill the rest with clinker and ash (pretty classic English forge) meneral soil or dry cheep cat litter. The other option is to use the bricks and tiles to acualy form most of the fil and fire bowl. 

The above article has suggestions for improvements so read it and don’t just look at the pictures, lol.