Quick build pallet & block charcoal JABOD

[Patrick Kelly]

Here's my take on a JABOD, thanks everyone for sharing your valued knowledge which gave me the insight for my creation. I took all my inspiration from this awesome site.

My initial thoughts were to keep everything as simple as possible and using materials I had at hand or that can be sourced easily. It may not be the prettiest but it's easy to erect and dismantle without the need for cutting or screwing timber together.

The basic idea is to stand a pallet on top of some blocks to create the platform at the desired height and then arrange blocks to hold the dirt, sand or whatever material you choose to hold everything in place. I went with a 2 x 1 block formation which leaves plenty room to move stock around comfortably. The blocks to the left have a slight gap to enable the tuyere to be inserted. Ideally a block should be placed at the back but I'm just butting up against my workshop for now.

A scrap piece of ply stops the dirt falling through the slats in the pallet.

I didn't have any fire bricks or regular bricks to hand to make the sides which would most likely be used. I found a slab of refractory fireplace bricks that had been reinforced with some sort of mortar and steel at my local refuse site so cut this to size. I've used this several times already in my first attempt at a jabod and so far it's holding up fine but will no doubt have to be replaced in the near future.

Instead of having the bottom of the forge just dirt I used a piece of the refractory which is sat on a 2" bed of sand. Next was to add the sand, but dirt will do just as well. It's basically to hold the sides together.

The dimensions of the pot are roughly 8" long by 4" wide and 2" deep.

I've been using a mattress inflator for air feed aimed at the tuyere from a distance of a few inches which works great but it's noisy and a pain to drag a cable outside. I'm going to try using my battery operated leaf blower which has a neat setting to adjust the 'revs' from low to high and anywhere in between and leave it running hands free. It barely whispers at low setting and is no way near as noisy as the mattress inflator. 

I'm new to this in every respect so any feedback or suggestions for improvement are more than welcome.

Gonna fire her up tomorrow!

 

 

 

[Glenn]

Flip the brick the air pipe goes through over, so you have some space under the air pipe for clinker to collect.  A little ash under the air pipe will insulate the bottom of the forge from too much heat.

[Patrick Kelly]

Thanks for the reply Glenn that is certainly I shall bear in mind your advice and rearrange, great thing about the the jabod is it's versatility.

With regards to the clinker I didn't have one with my previous attempt bearing in mind I'm using charchoal, I did however find some stone like pieces during forging that when cooled and I broke them with a hammer looked like chalk.

[pnut]

With charcoal the tue pipe can be on the floor of the firepot but I prefer it to be raised just a bit so I can burn coal as well. The rocky things you found were probably from your fill material falling in the firepot. 

That's a pretty good looking JABOD you made. 

Pnut

 

[JHCC]

It's quite possible that the rocky things were stones that had been in the charcoal, but so covered with charcoal dust that you couldn't spot them. I've had stones of various size turn up in a number of different brands of lump charcoal, so I've learned to keep an eye out for them as I move fuel from the bag to the fire. If you keep an immediate supply in a bucket near the forge, you can look for stones when you fill it up.

[Patrick Kelly]

I had my suspicions the stones were already in the charcoal, thank you JHCC for clarifying this. Good advice also to check for the stones when filling up from a bucket.