Hello from England

[SafetyThird]

Hello all, I'm Jay from Devon in England. I've been browsing on here for a little while so figured I should introduce myself. 

I had the chance to do a little bit of forge work in metalworking class in my first year of high school, a very long time ago. I forged a fire poker than my mother still uses to this day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, like many subjects, I wasn't able to continue it past that first year and so I haven't been at a forge for over 40 years. Recently I was chatting with a couple of friends of mine about hobby crafts, they're a woodworker and potter respectively, and mentioned I used to enjoy hitting hot iron. She said 'oh my dad's got an old anvil sitting in a shed somewhere, I could see if he's still got a use for it'. 

A few weeks later and I have an anvil, which appears to be a Mousehole anvil, pictures below. This morning I hit it with a wire brush on the angle grinder and uncovered some half legible marks, then gave it a coat of boiled linseed oil, which seems to be the thing to do. It rings nicely when you hit it with a hammer which I think is positive. I'm going to try and find a ball bearing and measure the rebound.

As I live in the countryside, I'm luck to have a barn with a workshop at the back and I'm in the process of building a welding table so have space for a small forge. This week I put together a propane forge burner using an Amal injector (amazing what you can learn on the internet :) ) and now I'm reading about building a small forge for it. My friend the potter has some spare kiln bricks and I'm just waiting to hear what type th ey are and whether they would be suitable for a forge. If so, I think all I need st a bit of angle steel and some all-thread and I can put a forge together. 

So, hopefully soon I'll be hitting hot metal again. There's a place not far from me that does two day introduction to forge work courses that I want to get on to reintroduce me to the art but until the current restrictions are lifted, they can't run them. 

 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Jay, glad to have you. If you'll ut your general location in the header you'll have a better chance hooking up with members living within visiting distance. Saying it in your introductory post isn't going to stick in anybody's memory once we open another post.

Nice looking anvil, she's got some weathering on her but the face looks good from here. Looks like it says she's a Mouse Hole alright. 

Soft, Insulating Fire Brick (IFB) usually doesn't last long in a propane forge. However there is a newer product by Morgan Thermal Ceramics, the K-26 IFB is rated for sustained 2,600f working temps and doesn't suffer fro the rapid thermal cycling typical of a propane forge. Propane flame is also very chemically active as is welding temperature forge welding fluxes and the K-26 IFB stands up to those as well. 

Put a coat of kiln wash on the flame contact faces and you have a durable gas forge. If you make it with angle iron and all thread you can reconfigure it later. It was kiln washed with Plistex and comes to high yellow in about 5 minutes. The pic below is shows one with a 1/2" T burner. If your Amal is a 3/4" you'll need to double the volume of the chamber or it will inhibit the burner's performance. Figure 300-350 cu/in for a 3/4" burner tube.

We had a club forge and burner build summer before last and turned out something like 35 for under $100 each. PIcs below.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Welcome to IFI, that MouseHole anvil looks great to me (I would love to have one) Oops my anvil envy is showing. Just wait till JHCC gets a look at it. Glad to see your burner hose is ISO 3821 rated for propane, really looks like you have been doing your homework all right.

[SafetyThird]

Hi all, thanks for the welcome. I've put my location in the section that shows up with each post, hope that's correct and what you meant. Frosty, thanks for the picture of that forge, it's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about. I've heard today that the firebricks I've been offered are hard and heavy, so I think they might work. I'll be going to collect some later this week/weekend and will report back then. 

Once I have the bricks I can start laying them out and figuring out how to make a suitable volume forge and how much steel I'll need. Really looking forward to this project.

[JHCC]

I agree with the Mousehole (aka The Undisputed King of Anvils) identification. This is the less common "Sheffield pattern", which is like a Birmingham pattern (i.e., with no flat area between the horn and the face), but with a square horn instead of a heel. Sweet find!

And welcome!

[ThomasPowers]

!914---it's a Warbaby!  Any sign of the broad arrow?  (I usually find dates on usually non-dated tools to be associated with the Broad Arrow.)

If it ever needs extensive time in the sun it's welcome to come visit here in the desert!  Ring is a good sign.  It's possible to bootstrap your smithing; just takes a bit longer and you may have some corrections to make when you finally do get to visit other smiths.

[SafetyThird]

Today I went and picked up a dozen bricks. They're hard and relatively heavy, no markings on them but I'm guessing they'd make a great pizza oven, and I may be making one of those next year out of some as the friends have a pile of them and told me I'm welcome to them. While they may not be the ideal option they're free, which is good and I'm guessing would have a fair bit of thermal mass. Logic tells me they'll take a while to heat up but give a nice heat buffer for working once it's up to the correct temperature. I now have to work out how many I need to make a suitable size forge for a ¾" Amal burner. Frosty mentioned 300cuin so I'll aim for something around that and use the photo of that forge as a rough blueprint and get back to you all next week when I've played around with the bricks.

[Frosty]

Morgan Thermal Ceramics has a location listed in Brittan I don't allow cookies on my machine so it won't let me see the address. The location is just south of Liverpool. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a listing. 

Hard firebrick will cost you more in fuel than it will save in the price of firebrick. 

The company also makes ceramic blanket and all sorts of handy refractory products.

Frosty The Lucky.

[SafetyThird]

Thanks Frosty, I'd read about the different firebricks and thought these might not be the right ones so it's good to have it confirmed. I've looked up K26 bricks and I can get them for £3+tax so I'll be ordering a dozen of them for the forge, plus a couple of spares, might as well get them while I'm paying for shipping. 

Design wise, I'm thinking of just doubling the length of the design you showed in your photo, which should be about the correct size. I'll mock it up with my bricks today and check. Hopefully the single ¾" burner will be ok in that and it would allow me to heat up longer pieces if need be in the future.

Do you just paint the inner surfaces of the bricks with kiln wash before assembly or should it be done afterwards?

Thanks for all the help.

[SafetyThird]

Ok, so googling gives no options for Plistix in the UK. I can find castable refractory which the place that sells the bricks says is used to line kilns and forges, is that the same sort of thing? 25kg is the smallest bag and costs almost as much as the bricks do so I'd be Tempted to just build the forge and consider the bricks replaceable, probably get a fair bit of use before I have to replace then and that wouldn't be a difficult job if I build a forge similar to your design which just unbolts to take it apart. At which point I'd have a better idea of what I'd plan to do with forging and perhaps build a different design of forge at that point.

[Frosty]

Morgan doesn't make or carry Plistex or Matrikote. Try calling a ceramic kiln supply and ask for a 3,000f. "kiln wash". If they don't carry it they'll know who does. I have much better luck on the telephone rather than the internet. Influencers have screwed up the usefulness of internet searches they're almost not worth the keyboard time. 

You want a 3,000f, water setting, high alumina refractory. Not, REPEAT N O T refractory cement or mortar!! Cements and mortars are for sticking brick together and do not stand up to flame contact like the inside of a propane forge. Lots of high temp chemistry going on in a propane flame. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

[SafetyThird]

Thanks Frosty, that's great, I'll contact a couple of places and see what they say, so much easier when you know what to ask for.

[SafetyThird]

Apparently you can't buy anything similar in the UK. This is what I was told by someone at a kiln supplies place. 

"As far as I know, there are not any of these products available in the UK but we have had some customers mix zircon flour with rigidiser to make their own but not something I know much about, to be honest. Although don't recognize any of those product names as we tend to get asked for ITC100 for these jobs."

I think I'll just use the bricks and see how I get on. They're cheap enough to replace for now.

[SafetyThird]

OK so had a play with some bricks and it looks like I can either have a tall or a long forge of roughly the correct dimensions. Both are the same volume at 280cuin. With the longer one I'd worry a single burner isn't going to spread the heat far enough along towards both ends. With the taller one there's a fair bit of unused upper space. Anything wider and I can't bridge the gap with a single brick.

Or, as I have a needle valve on the burner, could I just turn the burner down for the smaller forge but that would only be about 140cuin?

EDIT: Alternatively, should I just send the Amal injector back and get a ½" one and use a smaller forge for simplicity?