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Hello IFI, I've been passing through this forum for quite some time and as I just fired my first home built forge I though it time to join.  

Here's the build out list: Brake Disc, 16x30 metal cart, Buffalo blower, 2 inch piping for tuyere, clay, fire brick, and regular brick. sheet metal.

I clayed the entire cart around the disc under the bricks, this leveled things out for the brick mostly, but also added a nice added layer of thermal protection to the cheap cart metal.  Fire brick is cut around the disc face, giving me a pot 3.5 inches deep and 7 inches wide.  Picked up the blower for a steal on auction, ugly on the outside but beautiful on the inside, once I cleaned it out and re-lubed it turns like brand new.  Currently I've got a 2x4 and metal straps holding it rigid with the piping but plan to swap that for some metal brackets in the future, it was just all I had laying around at the time. Lastly I added the simple metal surround for wind protection plus the added benefit of being able to pile extra fuel up that back wall in the corners.

Fired for the first time Sunday with some nice lump charcoal, wally world was having a sale so why not...  As it was over 100 degrees out I mostly just beat up some rebar I had laying around before shutting things down, test firing was a huge success.  I noticed a few odd hot spots underneath the cart and decided to clay in the interior of the pot as well which I should have done it to begin with anyways, but that should take care of my errant heat.  We'll see in a few days when I have time to light it up again.

Outside of heating things up with a torch and beating them until they submit to my will around the homestead I've only ever worked steel on a lathe and that was a few (read 20) years ago.  I've done some forging of specialty tools made out of soft metals like copper and bronze in the distant past as well but never what I would call blacksmithing of anything.  I've been wanting to get into this side of things for quite awhile so I'm excited about this forge build and can't wait to see how ugly my first projects turn out.  Ha ha.  Attaching some pics for your pleasure or verbal destruction, whichever your bent.

Cart Forge 3.jpg

Cart Forge 4.jpg

Cart Forge 1.jpg

Cart Forge 2.jpg

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Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Pretty nice job on the forge but I think the way you've arranged the fire brick around the rotor over deepens your fire pot. You'll also want a way clear path to pass long stock across the fire so you can heat the center of long pieces. Imagine wanting to bend a 6' hairpin.

All in all I think it's well thought out and made, good job.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks Frosty.  I remeasured and after claying the pot I’m sitting right at 3 inches deep now.  It was a hard decision on how deep to aim for.  I looked at the dimensions of the Vulcan pots to get an idea for the depth, theirs are 4” deep for the square coal forge and 3” deep for the round coke forge.  After that I hit up the ol’ internet for searches and found pot depth recommendations from 0” all the way to 6”.  I’m a beekeeper and if you ask 10 beekeepers the same question you’ll get at least 15 answers.  Blacksmithing seems to be on par with that adage.

As for the wind break I agree 100% that it’s going to need trimmed back 4-6 inches on each side.  Luckily it’s just held in place with the clay and bricks.  I wanted to make sure I was happy with it before I bolted it in so I should be able to just slide it out.

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I know this is a post about your forge but I noticed your hammers have some pretty sharp edges. You may want to look into dressing the edges so that they don't leave big dings in your work.

Your forge looks good to me. Like Frosty said you might want to cut a hole in the wind break behind the fire pot to pass long stock through.  Enjoy your forge and remember it's supposed to be fun.

Pnut

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3" is pretty reasonable. My perspective must be off, something about 2D depth perception.

I don't burn coal very often so mine isn't a very experienced opinion though some things are a constant burning solid fuel.

Frosty The Lucky.

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7 hours ago, pnut said:

I know this is a post about your forge but I noticed your hammers have some pretty sharp edges. You may want to look into dressing the edges so that they don't leave big dings in your work.

Your forge looks good to me. Like Frosty said you might want to cut a hole in the wind break behind the fire pot to pass long stock through.  Enjoy your forge and remember it's supposed to be fun.

Pnut

You could make a flap, of sorts.  Keep it closed when you work on short stuff, and open to pass longer items through.  something only 2 or 3 inches across would be ideal.

Also, I had a similar idea for that cart.  HF purchase?

 

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Thanks pnut.  Good advice on the hammers, it's now on my to do list for the weekend.  I was just over to the hammer section and there are a couple of good posts on dressing hammers.  To relate it back to the forge topic, the handle on the cart seems to be a great place to hang the hammers.  But I did notice some decent heat making it's way to that end, 200-300 degrees at the hammer faces towards the fire according to my laser thermo.  Do you think there is any risk to the hardness by leaving the hammers here, especially over a full day of exposure?

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I don't think that 300 will affect them.  But it wouldn't hurt to check up on temps if you get it running several hours, especially if you're pushing a lot of air into the fire.  It wouldn't hurt to stach a wall of bricks in front of the hammers, if you want.

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MrT, It was indeed HF.  I had a few goals in mind when I started this build and economics was certainly one of them.  With the explicit intention of cutting a big hole in the middle of a brand new cart HF proved to be the best option.  If the whole thing falls apart I'm out a whole $30, everything else can be salvaged and put into a different platform.  Ultimately, if this proof of concept works and I decide to continue blacksmithing I'll be building a full brick forge off my barn, or maybe in my barn, it'll just depend on a couple of other shop item placements first.

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No coincidence I thought about making a forge cart from the exact same HF toolcart. I went another direction in the end though but it's still simmering on the back burner. Keep us posted on how it holds up. Good luck and have fun.

Pnut

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Remember when you put your stock in the fire you want it to be Horizontal and not at a steep angle. So the hot spot in the forge should support that.

300 degF won't mess the temper up but will mess up the handles. However in my various coal forges I can grab stuff with my bare hand that is sitting at that distance from the fire pot. Is this a function of your reflector oven?

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That's an interesting theory Thomas.  I'm planning to trim the wind break anyways to accommodate longer stock so I may as well fire the forge up with it out and see if there there is less heat at the handle end.  If it is in fact reflected heat I was getting I'll probably try a high temp paint on the inside of the wind break to see if that cuts the reflective nature of the bare metal.  I also like MrT's suggestion of a simple line of bricks standing up blocking the heat.

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A shade to block the IR from the hammer heads is as easy as piling your ready coal in front of them. You don't really want a lot of exposed fire, I like to keep it buried under coal that's coking up. It keeps more heat IN the fire where I want it to heat my steel.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Update on the forge.  Claying the pot helped eliminate the hot spot issues underneath.  I trimmed back the wind break to just past the center line of the pot on each side so I can lay material straight across the cart, which I ended up doing today while drawing out the first half of a set of tongs.  The wind block is still large enough I can stand slightly off to the side while cranking the blower and get no radiated heat towards me which is nice.  I also hit the wind break with a dusting of flat black paint to cut down the reflectivity.  It’s not high temp stuff and probably won’t last more than a few days of forging but it was on hand.  I doubled down and took Mr.T’s suggestion and stood a brick on edge in front of the hammers.  Between the paint and the extra brick, the handle end of the cart is remaining cool, as cool as South Georgia is in the summer at least.  Lastly I dressed up the faces of my hammers. 

Quite an education today.  A few of my takeaways:

  1. Metal moves much easier at the correct temperature.  At the start of the day the forge was in the sun, on more than one occasion the sunlight prevented me from seeing the color of the material.  OR, I can quit with the sun was in my ear excuse and just admit I have to be more patient in waiting for it to reach the correct temp.  
  2. I am sadly out of shape.  I’m using muscles I haven’t uses in years.  If I had to go back to working a shop floor repairing airplanes I would probably call in dead on day 2.  At least I don’t have a paycheck riding on my blacksmithing and can take my time rebuilding those arms. On the second heat I put the 4 pounder down and used the 2 pounder the rest of the day.
  3. My feet can move really fast when hot metal is accidentally dropped towards them.
  4. Too much fuel is bad, not enough fuel is bad, and not clearing the bottom of the pot occasionally to ensure air can get through is also bad.  I think it will come naturally the more I use this forge, but it was obvious my fire tending skill were lacking at times today.  When the fuel was good and the airflow was good this little thing seems to do it’s job with ease.  While tongs are project number one, I think a proper fire tending tool is in order for project number two.  Thus far I’ve been using a scrap piece of rod to poke the coals around.
  5. The blower could use a cross brace.  Twice it twisted in the pipe, not much and easily twisted back to straight, but if I put a single stand-off from one of the case bolts to the cart it will eliminate the potential.

All in all, it was a good day moving metal around.

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Tongs are a tricky first project. There's a lot of operations that all have to go right to get a good pair of tongs. I started at the beginning of the year and still don't think I can make a decent pair of tongs. I haven't had any one on one instruction either. I think I have the operations about licked except punching a clean hole and I've been practicing. When I get more comfortable with that I will try a pair from scratch. I've been using twist tongs until then. If you feel you have to have tongs look at the easy tongs blueprint. 

Personally I would think a fire rake would be a better first project and then some J and S hooks. You can't make tongs without a well maintained fire and the hooks will teach you all the operations needed to make tongs. That's just my two cents and good idea switching to a lighter hammer.Starting out swinging a four pound hammer may make for some painful injuries to the elbow if you're not accustomed to it.

Pnut

 

 

 

 

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Forge update: Smaller fire seems to be working better.  With the charcoal pile only slightly above the the rim the material can lay flat.  My first pair of tongs are complete, ugly, but complete.  They’re asymmetrical, covered in cold shuts, and I can see at least 2 crack, but by god I made them myself with fire and a hammer.  My significant other immediately gave me a nice compliment on them......then asked if it would have been better to just buy a pair.  I took the compliment and then told her it was more of an an educational experience making it much more valuable then bought pair.  She then returned to the house.  Ah well.

Anyways, back to the forge.  By keeping the fire fairly small I have to feed it a handful of charcoal every 3 or 4 heats.  I have zero idea if my fuel consumption is good, bad, or normal for lump charcoal.  Any opinions out there?  

When I had to heat the middle area of the rod the heat shield prevented proper placement.  I had to go across the cart which is why I trimmed the shield back in the first place.  But I found the raised edges of the cart holds the material just a little higher and with a smaller fire I had to throw a couple more handful of fuel on to move the heat up.  I’ve considered either trimming or hammering the sides of the cart down to level with the brick but I worry about weakening the rolled edge’s purpose.

Very happy with the forge’s performance as well as my own.  Fire+hammer+steel=tongs, that’s so cool, sorry, no matter how ugly they are, they’re still the first thing I’ve blacksmithed in steal.  The largest material has been 1/2 inch which it heats with no problem.  Next test for the forge will be a 1 inch round bar to see how it handles slightly larger stock.  

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Use an angle grinder or big tin snips to cut a V shaped notch on the front and back edge and cut a little hole In the bottom of the wind break for a pass through

Good job on the forge and congrats on the tongs. They're a tough first project. If they don't function like you want them to, look up easy tongs in the blue print section. They're just that easy to make and functional. If I recall correctly they were made by a ten year old.

Pnut

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  • 3 months later...

Forge update:

Cart is holding up well, handle works amazing for a hammer and tong holder.

Blower is amazing, I feed it a few drops of oil after a day of use.

Clay lining is shot xx xxxx.  I haven't been at it every single weekend but I'd guess 10-12 of the past 14 I've been out there.  If a handful of clay once a quarter is the only upkeep it needs I think it's doing pretty good but what do I know.

It does pretty good, performance wise, at least for what I've been heating.  So far just beating some hooks to shape and made an anvil hold down out of 3/4 rod. No issues with 3/4 getting to temp.  I haven't forge welded anything yet, but that may be on the agenda for next weekend.

Side note: I had my first experience at the local steel supplier.  I told them I was a hobbyist blacksmith and wanted to make a small purchase(about $100 worth of material)  They were very friendly and accommodating.  Only draw back is they deal pretty much entirely in a36, they've got every size under the sun but if I want anything else I'll have to check out the other supplier in town.  Hopefully they're just as easy to deal with.  But for now I've got plenty to practice on without feeling like I'm wasting stock.

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