With my charcoal forge I have come to realize the amount of CO it can give off. With the right amount of air a blueish green flame hovers just above the charcoal. Not enough air and the flame disappears. A quick jet of air and the flame bursts back to life. I did some research and now think that floating flame is CO burning off. Even with an open air shop I decided to put in a CO detector just in case. 

Also I highly recommend having designated metal containers for holding anything that has come out of the forge so it can cool.  

Dumping the forge table contents into a metal bucket of Water can be a good idea.  I once was at a demo and at the end of the day raked the fire out to cool while I loaded stuff and then dumped it into a metal bucket and put it in the bed of the pickup and headed home.  A short while later I happened to look in my rear view mirror and noticed that a section of the bucket was glowing red! There was a coal that was not dead and the wind had almost caused me to have a major problem.

When I was a patrolman with the PD, I received a call about someone starting grass fires along a State Highway. Sure enough about every hundred yards or so there was a fire burning and fire department units were putting them out. I was able to overtake the culprit and found out they were towing one of those large BBQ/smoker rigs and hot coals were blowing out of the draft openings. The last time the BBQ was used was at our county fair four days prior. They thought all of the embers were extinguished. It goes to show hot coals can remain viable for a long time when banked in enough ashes.

I found this video which might interest some, has a nice link too.

 

Mr. Casapa,

Thank you for posting the video. It was very informative.

One point,

I did not find the link mentioned in that video.

Please tell me where I might find it. It looks like a very informative link.

Thank you.

SLAG.

Excellent video and so true. I built my first forge and a friend of mine made me a hood. It was not very good at removing the coal smoke so I put a blower in the stack. That helped but I didn't get a good draft and suffered headache's until I installed a shroud around the forge connected to the chimney. I even tried extending the hood down with added sheet metal, which didn't help. You can see the monster hood in this picture and the added shroud that took care of the problem. My point being do not rely on a hood to protect you from fumes.

 

Slag I think you have to view the video on you tube to see the link.

http://www.beautifuliron.com/chimneys.htm .There you go

Theres other pages on that site, once there click the top link to main site.

I have that site bookmarked, lots of good info there.

Only bad point about the video is his carbon monoxide detector positioning.

https://www.hetas.co.uk/wp-content/mediauploads/COconsumer220118DIGITAL.pdf

Mr. Casapa.

Thank you for posting the reference.

It's excellent.

SLAG.

Good video, thanks for posting. You see lots of forge hoods that are too large and when they don't draw the person makes it bigger. If I go coal in the shop I'm putting in a side draft.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you all for this information, I will have my forge right up against the door for ventilation and have a CO monitor about a meter away along with a metal bucket next to it.