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I Forge Iron

shop layout idea's


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I agree with a good working triangle but don't like putting any tool that may see pass through projects. A corner boxes that tool in requiring a pass through door to heat a section of a bar farther from the end than the distance from the fire to the wall. If  this building isn't built I'd be eyeballing the door into the workshop as the pass through. It'd let you heat the center of a nearly 8 m. length. The real down side is the forge blocking the doorway, even if partially.

I put the forge in the middle of the long wall when practical. This allows me to use helpers on either or both sides of the fire to support long stock. Or as I've seen in a couple illustrations and pics a bench at or just below forge height a couple feet, say a meter from the forge can do double duty as helper and hot work bench.

In an area that small I'd keep everything mobile till I'd used it a while THEN screw benches and shelves to the walls and maybe hard mount the vise and maybe anvil. 

I also really like a leg vise on the same wall as the forge so I can slide stock from the fire through the vise to position. No lifting, carrying or turning it. In some cases that is. The less handling the more efficient the work space. This is one of the prime tenets for the work triangle.

Frosty The Lucky.

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360 around the post vice is manditory for me as well. I do most of my scrolling with benders and scrolling wrenchs. Its amazing how quick it gets to needing 10' of material to make a scroll.

I used to require that in my setup for my anvil as well, but i rarely need to walk around my anvil anymore. So as long as i can work the center of a 20' bar across the face of my anvil im a happy camper. Thats 10' on each side of the face.

I had a 16'×20' shop for a long time so i do understand efficiency of space.

I consider a passthru a dirt cheap way to add "space". ;) I had two permanent adjustable stands to support my iron. One inside at the pass thru, and one a few feet beyond my outside wall. And a cute lil pully operated door with hand forged hardware.  It was purty to look at and easy to operate.  ;)

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Take your shop plan and lay it out in the yard per your drawing. Make tall cardboard boxes to represent the items in your shop. Play with the size and length of the stock you will be using to see if the shop layout fits the work. Is the work triangle close enough to be just a step or two away from each most used tool?  Drawings are good, real time space and a little practice is better.

Build the shop what you feel fits for you, then make it larger. (grin)

 

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6 hours ago, ADHD-forge said:

i was thinking of a square hole in the ground to mount a post that's interchangeable for either free standing vise of other tools like a bender or whatever i come up with

That's a gozinta and I swear by mine. I have 2" receiver tubing 1/4" below the surface of the shop floor so the 1/4" thick caps are flush. The caps are welded to short lengths of 2" sq tubing and keep the holes closed without being a trip hazard when I'm not using them. The gozintas are planted on a 2' grid and connected below the slab via 4" ABS plastic piping that is connected to (some day) an exhaust blower. The accident put finishing the shop on hold.

Anyway, I have a number of pedestal tools on 2" sq. tubing and they can be placed where convenient or leaned against a wall out of the way. The proposed welding / cutting table is bar grate over a hopper shaped plenum with legs that will drop into 4 gozintas. With the exhaust blower on any cutting or welding fumes I develop will be sucked down into the floor circulated around a couple corners then through a dust collector and finally out. No smoke escapes into the shop so I don't have to change the warm air out a few times to get rid of it. The warmer shop air that is drawn into the floor exhaust system will shed it's heat into the sub floor preserving it to an extent for the shop. 

I swear by gozintas but you REALLY have to have a good handle on what you need and where. My shop is 30' x 40' and the gozintas only take up about 60% so they're only in the way part of the time.

Frosty The Lucky.

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No, you - put - POSTS in post holes.:rolleyes: Well, okay if you put posts with other stuff on them into your post hole it'd be a gozinta of a sort. :)

Other stuff goes in ta  gozintas. My gozintas are trailer hitch receiver tube size. Hitch receiver tubing is crazy expensive like 4x the close enough size I bought. the ID is like 2 3/16" but I don't recall the steel yard dimensions. I cut them to length plugged them into the ABS exhaust system and welded them into the rebar then had the floor poured. 

Guess I don't have a pic of the ABS sub floor exhaust but it's under the gozintas. I'm Zip tieing in the PEX hydronic heat tubing in the pic, the gozintas are capped, the tops of the caps are flush with the floor. Well, they were supposed to be, some of the gozintas rose a little, don't know why and I couldn't smack them down with a sledge even before the concrete set. Oh well.  Running the infloor heat right next to the gozintas makes it easy to miss them if I need to drill for floor anchors for something. 

Frosty The Lucky.

shopheat03.jpg.cc8dfb49e7c8f2afffc10ad0a87a553f.jpg

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5 hours ago, ADHD-forge said:

Whats a gozintas frosty? Thats a word i've never heard before, i'm gona go out on a limb heren and you mean the posthole. :) always good to learn some slang :D

If you watched the Beverly Hillbillys, you'd know what a Gozinta is, it's a mathematical term, as in 3 Gozinta 12, 4 times , in engineering, it is indicated by a 50mm tube Gazinta into a 50mm pipe, but can be tight.

 

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