Cracked fire pots?

From a casting point of view, casting these objects can be screwed in the melting phase. A dirty casting, may have too much porosity, if it's a remelt as opposed to a smelt may also cause this problem.

Usually if you find a bad product you tell the company that manufactured it and give them a chance to rectify the situation. If the products are still crap, you go with a good producer.

Pure iron is difficult to get these days, so the firepots that are cracking may not be iron at all.

I was thinking that with the alloys available today, you could feasibly construct a firepot, but you would have to select the right alloy in plate form. Plate is less likely to crack than a casting.

Regards Charles

spaco wrote:

Pete,

As a couple have mentioned here, have you considered building your own? I have seen a great set of instructions on building a firepot that was shown in the book "A Blacksmith's Primer" by Randy McDaniel. Not only is the book a great resource for the firepot, it's a great resource for teaching beginners and intermediates as well. From your comments, it sounds like it would fit right in with the folks who are using these firepots. As I recall, the instructions were VERY clear, and used straight forward techniques to build the pots. Also, the book is still available.

Hope this helps, Paul