Charcoal or propane

Yeah and cheap! :)

Poly vinyl alcohol? :)

Alvin in AZ ps- back in the late 60's me and a buddy used sodium silicate (sold for egg storage :/) and sawdust to make cherry-bomb casings :)

Reply to
alvinj
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I don't agree. A coal forge allows you to build just the right sized fire; a gas forge has to be large enough for whatever you want to put it it. This means that a gas forge is larger and loses more heat. It also stays on all the time. If you kept the blower working on the coal, it would put out a lot more btu's than a hand crank forge.

So I think a gas forge does put out more btu's (stays hotter on average) and is a larger fire, with more heat.

Steve

Greyangel wrote:

Reply to
Steve Smith

Alright - I can see your point. Can't argue the logic there ;-) Like I said, I've never used coal. Seems like you would loose a lot of heat with the open setup but so long as you built the fire with efficiency in mind you could keep it relatively small... I am stuck with a given volume of heat with the gas but I can manage the efficiency of that too. Kind of depends on the job at hand and I've never worked it indoors. Still, you can build the forge to the type of work you plan to do. I've got a simple design that is cheap and easy to build (has its drawbacks too...) and I built two of them at the same time. One is quite small and the other is a bigger general use unit. All they are is a heat canister. I build them to be desposable. The torch is the important part and is applied where and how I need it. I'm not an advocate of any particular method. I just know what works for me.

GA

Reply to
Greyangel

Here I thought you were going to come out with the next level in super efficient gas forges to show me the error of my ways...

I've used coal, but I really prefer gas.

Steve

Greyangel wrote:

Reply to
Steve Smith

Wow. I completely forgot about this thread. When I started it I thought I would give it a couple of days and check back.

I'll answer a couple of questions first.

I plan on making everything from some of the basic tools (tongs, maybe a hardy or two) to longswords. I will do simple knives for the kitchen and fun knives (khukuris) for the back yard. I do plan on forge welding so brickettes or any fuel that will interfere with welding (such as lazzari charcoal) is out of the question.

I already have two blowers (air, not gas) for a charcoal forge. One is the air pump from a nautilus mattress and the other is an electric leaf blower. Both of them were free so if I decide to go propane I haven't wasted any money on them.

I don't have the resources to make charcoal right now but I could probably manage to get them in the future. I am checking laws and requirements for open burning permits in my area. If we build an addon to our shed I might be able to include a smoke stack or chimney and get around the permits and burning seasons.

The equipment I have is an anvil (hay-budden 133# with a 3/4"(?) steel plate face), a 3# square faced hammer that needs to be cleaned up and one face will be slightly rounded, a 1# ball peen hammer, a fullering hardy, and an angle grinder. Besides tongs what more tools to I need? Well that is unless I want to play around with my smithing "mentor" does. He is just an amature blade smith but he has his hands in room temperature nitrogen gas hardening, induction hardening, and custom thermit steel.

I know that the best (in the long run) option is to get both and use each for what it does best, but for now I just want to get one of them built. For what I want to do which involves heating different sizes of areas I think I will just do charcoal for the time being. Maybe once I can afford to build a second forge I will make a propane one.

Reply to
Jacob Hawes

Okay, here's a few thing to thimk on... You get better welds in the folding phase if you keep the work as close to a cube as possible. It's a volume to surface area thing, the heat doesn't get away as fast. You can always stretch it out later at forging temp. For welding, you want a small deep fire, so there's lots of fuel below the work, hot gas rises. The biggest mistake I've seen in beginning forges was lack of depth in the box. People get these old Cavalry farrier forges and wonder why they can't get good fusion, and their fire looks like it's made to cook hamburgers on. Two feet caross and three inches deep won't concentrate the heat.

Since you already have a blower, go with charcoal. Look in the Yalu Pages for a big rig repair shop, and see if you can scrounge a back axle brake drum. These are made from high strength heat resisting alloy steel, usually about fifteen inches across at the rim, and already have a big hole in the 'bottom' with holes for a flange mount around it. Line this with an inch of refractory concrete all the way to the rim, then build a stacked firebrick chimney on top of that. There's your firepot, typical service life 20 to 30 years with care. You'll need an air duct that reaches up into the pot, I reccomend a piece of big water pipe with a perforated screw-on cap, so you can change it out when it erodes. You have to drill your own perforations, something like 1/4" holes on 3/8" centers, leaving a 1/8" web between holes. Tee the air feed off this and add a short run of pipe with a cap for an ash catcher. The ash catcher should be vertical below the duct, T on it's side. Bhob I wish I had graphics. Mount this on a stand at convinient height and go to town.

Charly

Reply to
Charly the Bastard

PVA is a short term or generic term.

It is often used in 55 gallon (xxx liters) as a wood preservative.

It absorbs the (alcohol part) water and deposits the PV . It makes green wood usable after weeks in the tank.

Rifle stocks are often done this way.

The plastic part will be a carbon source and may be smelly. Martin

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

I actually meant poly vynil acetate - white paper/wood glue.

I don't think thats the same thing - although I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

Reply to
bigegg

You are ok - it was Poly vinyl glycol (not the antifreeze stuff but close.)

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

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