Coal Fired Forges; how many of us are there

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Darkhammersmithy

Joined
Jun 2, 2021
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Hello everyone, I'm new here as a member although I have read some comments here before. I have a 1906 coal fired forge, my first forge was a car brake drum with an old hand crank blower I found in a pawnshop. I do all of my heat treat and tempering on my forge, unless I'm using a small blowtorch for some tempering.
I'm just wondering how many other people do things similar to my methods?
 
I can't imagine having to use a coal forge. So much more knowledge and skill required over a gas forge. My hat's off to you.

Brings up the point about FiF that many of us have fussed about. Bring in 4 contestants and spring coal forges on them. One guy says "Great, that's all I ever use at home", and another guy says "I don't even know how to get one lit", and yes, there is a good bit of skill in just getting a coal forge to burn properly.

ok, rant mode OFF {g}
 
DevinT said:
Not the best way to make a knife.

Hoss
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If you know what you are doing it works well. I have two dagger blades I made from 5160. They are just over 8" long, they are both in the mid to high 50s Rockwell, have good edge retention, no warps or cracks. Took me 20 minutes to forge, heat treat and temper them. About 4 hours to put the edges on. So works for me
 
Darkhammersmithy said:
If you know what you are doing it works well. I have two dagger blades I made from 5160. They are just over 8" long, they are both in the mid to high 50s Rockwell, have good edge retention, no warps or cracks. Took me 20 minutes to forge, heat treat and temper them. About 4 hours to put the edges on. So works for me
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Agreed. Coal fired forges don't really have *that* steep of a learning curve. There are some things to keep an eye on for sure. It's easy to get a hot spot and get to smelting temperatures, which is bad. It's also easy to avoid that with a bit of monitoring. I'm amazed at your short forging/quench/temper time. I take significantly longer, but I'm also not working at it a ton.
 
I think what Devin was saying is that it may work, but it doesn't work best.

I started with coal in 1961. I gathered the coal along the RR tracks near my house and made a forge from an old hibachi, a 90° section of stove pipe, and a small circular fan. I self-taught myself how to smith from an 1890 machine shop book my grandfather had. For steel I used rebar, RR spikes, and other chunks of steel I could find in a nearby construction area. It didn't matter if it was good as long as I could make a sharp edge on the finished tool/weapon. An old man in the neighborhood gave me a bucket of vintage blacksmith tools and showed me a few things. He said tire-irons were good knife steel. From there on I used an endless supply of tire-irons from a nearby abandoned junkyard. I probably hauled a couple hundred home that year. They were pretty close to W-1. I quenched in rock salt and rain water. We welded up a brake drum forge and added an old Champion blower and I was the village blacksmith. Swords, knives axes, spears, etc. I though I made a great blade and there was nothing better than coal and brine.

Fast forward to 2000 and I am back smithing again. I bought a NC Forge Whisper Lowboy, got all my old equipment out of boxes, and started back making knives. Then I added a Bader B3, and build some more equipment. Improving my skills, education, and equipment hasn't stopped since.
This time I use the science I had learned since I was a kid and applied it to mlearning metallurgy and the science behind bladesmithing. I read all the books by the old guys, Hrisoulas, Goddard, Fowler, Boye, etc. I joined the ABS and learned things from Bill Moran, Batson, Hughes, and the other ABS folks. It didn't take long to realize that many of these fellows were great knifemakers, but their methods were less than perfect, or just plain outdated. Others in that group had taken the old skills and updated them into modern methods. With modern equipment, temperature control, better alloys, and better testing it was possible to make a knife of a known material, known hardness, and known properties. Studying geometry and some basic physics taught me how to design a knife to do a task not just good, but very good. I consider myself a metallurgical bladesmith.

I don't light a coal forge at home anymore because it isn't a neighbor friendly thing in the city. I have a 100 year old pump-arm and flywheel coal forge on the front porch along with other antique blacksmithing stuff.
I still forge with coal when it is what is on hand, like at Ashokan. Many here have seen me there and seen photos of me using coal to do complex forging. I know how to use coal, however, I now realize that while coal works, but doesn't work best for making high quality knives.
I much prefer the control and adaptability of a modern propane forge, a HT oven, a tempering oven, and good test equipment.

None of the above is meant to bash those who use coal. Some of the most beautiful ornamental things I have ever seen come from coal forges. The blacksmith folks up at Ashokan, the Central Maryland Blacksmith Guild, and the several Virginia Blacksmith associations are amazing. I have several things these folks have made, including a forged iris plant done in iron that is so lifelike it is hard to believe it isn't cast. My hat is off to those kind of skills.
 
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"Too many irons in the fire"; I've burned a few. But I do it the way I know. I know if I draw it three times I get the hardness and toughness I want.
 
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Mike Reilly said:
Agreed. Coal fired forges don't really have *that* steep of a learning curve. There are some things to keep an eye on for sure. It's easy to get a hot spot and get to smelting temperatures, which is bad. It's also easy to avoid that with a bit of monitoring. I'm amazed at your short forging/quench/temper time. I take significantly longer, but I'm also not working at it a ton.
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I've heard that from other smiths also, I was taught by my shop teacher and my Dad to draw to peacock blue, about 660° F, cool, sand, draw three times for best results. So I quench, never thinner than 1/8", grind off the scale then draw to blue and back in the water, repeat except no scale just remove the blue. This time I was only flattening and straightening the blanks and heat treat and tempering
 
There are some makers using coal and it is impressive to watch one who has considerable experience. There are however lots of drawbacks to using coal. Good clean coal/coke is not easy to get everywhere.

The biggest problem I see is temperature control. In all of the testing that me and Larrin have done, there is a pretty narrow band of temperature where any steel performs best. It would be nearly impossible to duplicate what can be done with a temperature controlled forge/furnace.

Hoss
 
I use a coal forge just because we have left over firewood for the next 500 years when we used to heat the house with wood. It's very tricky and not optimal but there is just something about coal forges that makes me enjoy using them more than gas forges.
 
I've been thinking about building a ceramic chip forge. Kinda get the best of both worlds that way...
 
I have the stuff for a chip forge in a box. In the new shop I may put it together just for fun tasks and blacksmith projects where localized heating is desirable.. A chip forge is not quite the same as coal, but some of the techniques are similar.
 
I'm beginning to sense I'm the only one here who still uses a 1906 coal fired forge? I do it all on the forge also; heat treat, tempering and forging. Although sometimes I save the third draw until I've finished the blade. Then I use a propane torch and leave the blade blue
 
Pretty much. It is a matter of control. While a skilled smith at a coal forge can make and heat treat a blade the will work, it won't have the same degree of control and quality as a smith using propane and a HT oven, plus testing equipment like a hardness tester. I think the thing that makes most folks here cringe is your blue tempering. While a fast blue over coal (usually resting on a plate of iron) doesn't make it as soft as a 2 hour temper at 600+°F, it is 200° higher than most people use. There are a range of maker skills and methods here, but the general trend is towards modern metallurgical knifemaking.

There are some coal and scrap metal guys here, and I am surprised they haven't chimed in.
 
While I love the idea of forging on a coal or charcoal fire, there are just too many downsides for my situation.
I live in a national park, in government housing. Environmental regulations just make it impossible, plus there's the social pressure to be "normal". Of course park service "normal" is not your average American normal, but whatever... The portability of propane just makes things much easier for me.
Every time I see someone forging with charcoal or coal I admit I get a bit jealous, cause I think it's so cool, but it's just not for me!
 
I use lump charcoal in a small forge. A big YES to whoever mentioned that you can get into smelting temps very quickly. I've done it a few times before I learned to pay attention. Temps can be tough but incandescence color temps for quenching do work and a temp gun will narrow it down to where I need it. Tempering is in an old toaster oven that I have laboriously calibrated. It's not as clean and scientific as I'd prefer but it DOES work. The investment is minimal and lump charcoal is very cheap around here.

Best regards

Jack
 
Yes coal is cheap, or free; I use furnace coal. Several years ago, on a local radio show called "trading post", people buy, sell and trade as the name suggests. A woman had converted her home to gas and said anyone who would take it could have the coal in her basement. It was over two tons and I have been using that for a long time. Also I can get it for around $40 a ton if I need to buy it. I have melted the end of some things through inattention, but "knifemakers don't make mistakes; they just make a smaller knife "
Fortunately I live about 10 miles west of the middle of nowhere on a six acre lot, surrounded by farmers who make more noise and don't care about a little smoke
 
I get that it was free, but I thought furnace coal was not the preferred coal for forging? Bituminous coal, specifically Pocahontas #3 blacksmith coal, is what I always used once I started forging seriously. The stuff I picked up along the RR track was metallurgical coal headed for the steel mills overseas. Much of it came from the Pocahontas seam in the western part of Virginia, and in West Virginia. It had to be broken up to use, but was a great forging coal.

Funny story:
When Bill Moran died they has an auction of a lot of his stuff at the shop and house, They sold several bags of his forging coal for a rather high price ... because it belonged to "Bill". After the auction a few folks were out behind the building gathering up the pile of coal by the back door and sticking it in boxes, paper sacks, and plastic trash bags like they had found the mother lode. I asked why they were doing that and they said that they were told it was free .. and they were going to use it to forge with. I grinned and told them that was just cheap coal he used in the pot belly stove. The good stuff was never stored outside in the rain.
 
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