How did you cut the notches in your bricks?  I tried just chiseling off corners, and ended up with broken bricks, but you have a nice clean hole through the two of them...

 

I started with a 1/2" masonry bit in my hand drill, then I hand-worked the openings with the corner of a sharp chisel bit- in my case, a rail spike. I used a 12oz ballpein to lightly strike the spike, with the edge canted slightly to only place the corner on the point needing removal. Be careful how you support the brick, and also be alert to how the stress forces may affect the brick. They are super brittle, so exercise patience and caution. You aren't removing chunks at a time, more like grains and chips. If my diesel mechanic hands can do it, so can you! 

 

Thanks!  I was probably just going at it too hard.  I'm more used to working clay before it gets fired.

Nothing says you can’t make your own brick

Yep, take clay and wedge in about 2 parts sand and you have adobe.

Good adobe is 1/3 clay and at least 1/2 sand. Put  subsoil in a jar, add water and shake. Let it settle and you can see the sand, clay and wilt settle out to judge how to amend it .

If you need durability and strength he addition of horse manure works well 

Right, I was thinking commercial clay we used in the pottery studio (we have about 200 pounds of different types) but clay right out of the ground works a treat too.

In New Jersey in colonial times they used to mix animal hair into the plaster for greater strength.  A local house had some examined to see how much was things like domesticated animals and how much was game animals as an indication of farming and hunting at that place and time.

I used some of this good ole Alabama red clay the other day. I'm going to get the kitty litter out and reclay my forge with it.

Well I guess I’ve just got to make some bricks now... 

Irondragon: when you say 2:1 is that by volume or weight?  My father just reminded me this evening that I’ve got 30-40lbs of clay in their garage left over from college, and I’ve still got sand around from other projects. 

Edited January 15, 20206 yr by james austin

I mix it by volume, doesn't have to be precise.

Thanks!  I’ll give it a try once I can get that clay softened up a bit. 

Try 2 parts sand and one part clay, not 1/2 sand and clay.  The addition of wood ash is also nice as it helps keep coal slag from sticking to the vitrified clays 

The way we soften rock hard 25 pound blocks of clay is to put them in a large plastic bag (the bag they come in works if there are no holes) add a cup of clean water then put the bag of clay in a 5 gal bucket. Add water to the top of the block and let it sit for about a week. The outside of the bag water will exert pressure on the water inside the bag evenly and it will penetrate the clay better.

Charles is right about adding a little wood ash. In essence what you are making is fire clay.

The learning! The learning! 

I have 2 buckets of clay-ish dirts, one from the shop and one from a customers excavator undercarriage haha

I did a bit of a wash experiment (3rd bucket with 1/3 "dirt" and 1/3 water) to get the detritus out of it, and am letting it settle now. It came out looking like slick, and my squirrel-cage mixer for my drill acted like a course mesh to isolate pebbles, leaves, and twigs. 

Is it necessary? I have no idea!! However by golly I'm giving it a shot! 

 

Pretty clear that I'm isolating the clay. No idea if I need to, but today's experiment was certainly worth the go. 

 

Anywho...

It will give you an idea of the of the proportions of sand, silt and sand.

On 1/14/2020 at 3:14 PM, ThomasPowers said:

In New Jersey in colonial times they used to mix animal hair into the plaster for greater strength

When I used to do fire demo/resto I would run into old horsehair plaster and lathe all the time. I hated to demo it. It gets so heavy after the fire department soaks it down. By the end of the day every shovelful would feel like it weighed a ton.  I don't think I could do ten or twelve hours of that anymore, I'd fall over dead.

Pnut

CtG, we have an arroyo behind my next door neighbor's place and when it flows it leaves large puddles that dry up and make very large and thick clay plates as it cracks. I've collected a 55 gallon barrel of them for when I need a higher clay content than the soil has.

Well, I dropped the floor and put the tue up higher, flipped my tue brick upside down and gave an inch gap to the bottom. I have the adobe brick (which cracked this run) at the bottom, then 2 layers of hard firebrick for about 4" between the fire and wood. 

I was also given a bag of bituminous coal. 

So tonight, I ran roughly 80/20 charcoal/coal. It worked great! Having the gap beneath the tuyere really did make a difference as well- instead of just having a hot pocket right next to the outlet, I got a hot line across the trench. 

In all of my pictures my fuel is very low, I was playing with the coal/charcoal mix. When I went to test heat some steel I built it up a fair bit higher.

Step at a time!

Looks good. Did you coke the coal before adding it to the fire? I don't think it would matter for decorative forgings. I'm not certain but blades and tools might be affected by the sulfur if you don't coke the coal first. 

Pnut

I sprinkled it in on either side of the fire, let it smoke off and then shifted it onto the heat. 

So no coking before hand, no. Still learning and practicing. Good point though, a friend who was over and I were commenting on the green-yellow haze right before it would stop smoking, and we both agreed it was likely sulfur compounds burning off. 

Yes you don't put blade steel into the fire until it cleans up and then you just keep adding green coal regularly on top so it's cokes before it makes it's way down to where the steel is at.  I usually do a "non-critical" project while the forge is getting started and doing the initial coking.  Leaving some good coke, AKA Breeze, for the next fire can sped things up as you can skip the start up coking and go directly to the maintenance coking if you have enough Breeze.