Silo house Dan! Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 yea, sorry Mod34 I dont understand your quoting rules? sorry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 Probably best to ask questions on the thread for the actual rule: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Dan, you can select a specific section of a post that pertains to your reply and a box will come uner it saying "quote seletion" click that and it will save unnecessary quoting of the full post. If replying to the whole previous post right before yours, there is no need to quote it. No problem with newbies creating a thread if they need help or have something to show or information to offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Silo house Dan: the information you are asking for.. Is complex in nature but simple in form.. Complex because as most pointed out it really depends on what you forge, size of metal, shape of metal that needs to be heated. stack, no stack.. etc, etc.. Today there are many things that are frowned upon and everybody will tell others not to.... (ive used cement and cored bricks for forges in the past and yes they can explode).. The cement was like 50% salt and it worked just fine.. But that is a different story.. With this said, someones experienced that has done things against the grain for years will get an earful... So as far as forge design goes.. I'd also suggest a model that you can adapt until you figure out what you want in a forge.. I built 6 forges of various means till I figured out I was doing it all wrong and then also figured out that some of the information that was talked about as being correct was in fact not correct... So, first figure out what you think you would want to make.. Then your question can be narrowed down more.... Or you can make a test bed using sheet steels, box of dirt, and a blower with a known CFM at a given inch of water to supply what you want to do.. Ok, as to blower... You want a blower that will always supply you with more air vs not enough... I'm using soft coal now that has a bunch of fines in it.. The way you get rid of the fines is to increase blast and blow the fines out of the firepot into the flue... This would not be possible if I did not have a large enough blower that generates enough blast pressure to do it.. You can have a blower that will blow enough air at ambient pressure (no restrictions) but will fail miserably as soon as it faces any resistance.. The CFM will drop off to nothing.. Years ago I went through and looked at making my own hand crank blower and figure for soft coal it was like 250cfm at like 3lbs per square inch... This is very vague now as I was like 11 years old.. I had done the math, blah, blah, blah.. Someone should make up a sheet with CFM and pressure needed for charcoal, soft and hard coal and coke.. They all take different levels of air volume and pressure... At 3PSI I found I couldn't even keep a shallow charcoal fire in place unless it was well banked.. But hard coal would barely stay lit... Anyhow, it's a fairly low pressure that is needed unless you are driving air through like for the reason above.. As to operation of the fire.. Velocity of the air is also a factor coupled with volume and pressure and again comes back to the size of the blower.. Link back here if you do start a separate thread.. Be interested to follow up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silo house Dan! Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Well I was trying for information specific to Anthracite and this thread I thought was about it. I am working on a volumetric spread sheet on my ribbon burner design. waiting on a good quality gas flow meter. I dont think you could make one on a coal forge due to ambient interactions of the open fuel chamber... ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 You need to be more specific. More like this.. . Do you want to know how to start a hard coal forge? I want to forge hammers in the 1lbs to 4lbs and maybe some other items like top fullers, and such.. No long pieces.. What am I looking for in firepot size? I am going to be using a hard coal forge for general purpose forging from gate hooks to 16lb sledge hammers.. I'm going to be forging only small leaves up to about 3/4" round or square stock.. How big of a forge hearth do i need.. General questions have all ready been answered.. Quite nicely... 2+____=___ is hard to answer.. Again.. you need direct questions.... What do you plan on making? Lets start there.. So If I were to guess at you question... YOU want to know if you can use a Hard coal forge as a gasification unit like in an Closed hearth furnace>> I'm using closed here as I am trying to figure out your exact question... Closed as in just a flue on the other side of the charge.. (Typically known as and open hearth furnace) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silo house Dan! Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 WOW never mind, dont like the tudes I jeep getting here.. I put up drawling, explained my self, asked question pertaining to Anthrasite. I give up. Good bye Please delete me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted January 24, 2019 Share Posted January 24, 2019 Well, I'm sorry to see you go.. What you posted showed a rough drawing of an extremely small hood mounted or shown upside down.. What are the upright straight pieces on the sides of the tapers? Having a conversation is a question and answer with statements thrown in for good measure.. If you can't discuss a project because you don't have the lingo.. It's ok.. Take your time and we can work through it.. But I personally can not read your mind and the drawing you posted is not a fire pot.. Again.. in order to answer your question one needs more information.. No one was being sassy.. So, don't have a knee jerk reaction in frustration.. We are all frustrated that the information can not be started to help.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted January 25, 2019 Share Posted January 25, 2019 the only attitude was when you demanded we approve your posts faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tzelik Hammar Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Thank you for this information! I have been forging with anthracite for about a year and a half now, and its nice to see information brought together to make things easier. One thing, the smaller size coal from tractor supply really likes to pop and jump, and will bite you pretty solidly. I have had decent success using the bigger size, then putting the smaller on top as a gap-filler. Other than chasing the fire around sometimes, It works ok at keeping the fire hot when I cant crank for a minute or two. What I haven't had any success in is mounding it up and poking the hole in the top for the little volcano (Pardon the childish imagery). Does Anthracite need a hole poked down into the fireball? Thanks again, Randell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 You won't have any luck with that.. It only works with soft coal.. It won't work with coke or charcoal either.. But ideally you don't need to do that anyhow.. No need for a hollow fire as there is not the same formation of coke (expanding) created with soft coal.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Poking a small hole in the top of the soft coal is to lets a flame ignite the smoke being produced by the green coal turning into coke. With good fire maintenance the green coal cokes up on the outside edge of the fire, and is brought into the fire as the fuel burns and needs to be replaced. That way, covering the fire with green coal is not needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 10, 2019 Author Share Posted February 10, 2019 Poking a hole in the top can help with airflow as you're getting the fire started. Once the fire is established, it's not so important. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DBTomlinson Posted December 29, 2019 Share Posted December 29, 2019 Due to some incomplete research about a year ago I came to the exactly incorrect conclusion that I needed to use anthracite coal in my newly built forge. I bought a pickup truck load of it. My first attempt at blacksmithing didn’t last long (that’s another story) but now that I’ve built another, better forge I still have most of that truckload of coal. It gets hot enough to forge mild steel, for sure I know that so far: Can’t weld with it, also so far, and I haven’t tried it on tool steels or stainless yet. (I’ll let you know next week how that goes). Long story short though: I paid for it and I’m going to use it for something at least. My experiences with it match everything described here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 Stack it high and run the air to it.. It will all work out just fine.. DB. once you figure it out you will be happy to have a forge and it will work well.. I know a guy who that is all he used for 40 years and turned out beautiful work. I asked him why, hard coal.. He said because it was cheap and he only needed to go to the local hardware store to buy it.. He developed his own forge and it was brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pnut Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 Make sure you have it broken into small enough pieces. I had the best luck with pieces about the size of a thumbnail, around an inch or a little less. Pnut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onetreeforge Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 I have started using Anthracite coal because I got a ton for $20 its a bit frustrating and takes longer to heat up steel, fire doesn't like to be deep, but for the work I do is ok and for the price I wont complain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted April 3, 2022 Share Posted April 3, 2022 onetreeforge, a deeper fire, and with enough air you will find you are burning steel in no time. A decent sized electric blower with a valve gate or flapper disk on the blower opening will work. The anthracite needs to have air constantly fed to it so be sure and have a good thick firepot.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWISTEDWILLOW Posted April 4, 2022 Share Posted April 4, 2022 For $20 a ton I’d say you definitely came out on top of that deal! I bet with a little experimenting you’ll get it figured out in no time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anvil Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 This is a good article, but I think there is some info not here that is pretty critical and may lead to misunderstandings. I did a google search on this and came up with a 2017 thread from here. Frosty and Thomas basically supported each other and gave a really simple example of what happens. They nailed it, bottom of the line. I'll paraphrase Frosty. If you pull a piece of iron out of the fire it will form scale. In an anthricite fire, your iron will scale in the fire. Its as simple as that. What causes scale? in this case oxidation is caused by O2 burning in the presence of iron. It oxidizes and causes scale which is an iron oxide. Pretty straight forward and you can't change this! This is called an oxidizing environment. Look it up. No matter what you do, no fire control, no depth of fire, no matter how high you stack it will solve this problem. It's inherent and unchangeable in anthracite{hard} coal. Heres why. Lets use a bag of nut hard coal from tractor supply. Lets assume that all nuts are the same,,, size. It takes a certain amount of O2 for this piece to burn. It takes the same amount of O2 for each nut in the bag, all things considered, to burn at the same rate. The amount of O2 determines how fast it burns. Add more O2, the faster it burns and the hotter your fire. Lol, in a "nut shell", thats it. If we have a 100 nuts and want them to all burn at the same rate, Your fire will be hotter but the amount of O2 has to be increased for this to happen. The more O2, the more severe the oxidation. You will not solve this oxidation problem by adding more coal, or any kind of fire control. you can only change it by changing your fuel. You just need to accept it as inherent when burning hard coal. So my contribution on how to burn hard coal is simple. Add more air to get it hot. If you need more coal, add coal and add more air. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frazer Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 Based on my experience with anthracite it is possible to consume all of the oxygen by the time the air reaches your piece. The difficult part is maintaining your neutral/reducing fire given anthracite's tendency to come apart when disturbed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 I get plumb tuckered out discussing things with the brain trust. For any given fire, be it hard coal soft coal, wood, propane, methane, corn, all the fuel oils, pulverized or atomized voal dust. There is a given amount of O2 needed to support combustion. There is a needed amount of O2 to create oxidizing neutral or carbonizing areas or types of fires. What makes solid fuel forges extremely unique is how air input as well as fuel depth both play with and against each other for a desired environment type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 Frazer aka Brady nicely said and is the reason for a steep sided firepot or forge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted April 5, 2022 Author Share Posted April 5, 2022 My own experience forging with atomized vole dust is rather limited, but I’m willing to defer to your presumably greater expertise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted April 5, 2022 Share Posted April 5, 2022 Lol. Atomized vole is delicious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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