Recommendation? Forge in Garage?

[ERRN]

To date, almost all of my knifemaking has been stock removal, and my shop has always been an attached garage. I’ve been planning for some time to move into forging, but haven’t moved towards buying any of those tools. The biggest reason has been hesitation with hammering on hot steel in an attached garage. If I did this at all it would be done most likely with the anvil and small propane forge at the front of the garage with the main door wide open for ventilation. What I don’t know yet is how much space is recommended at a minimum for safe clearance around the forge and anvil. Currently I’m not even wild about firing up my heat treat oven in a space where I sometimes also store wood.

I’m curios what others do and how they safely use the space if it’s an attached garage.

 

[A.McPherson]

I have all my forging stuff relatively mobile. I have my forge on a cart and I slide my anvil and bock outside when I forge, then put it away when I’m done.

 

[Lieblad]

Our shop is detached, but thats irrelevant. Catching alight is disaster regardless.
Primarily fire protection in a combustable building is based on housekeeping and initial construction. Keep cleaned up combustable dust & crap and eliminate cracks or surfaces where hot swarf might get into.
As far as radiant heat, that needs individual review per forge. One needs to determine how much radiant heat reaches combustible surfaces and fit shielding if needed.
Further, when done for the day, take the time to sweep up, put away tools, etc. look around and check back in 30 min. or so as firewatch.
My ventilation is at minimum a large squirrelcage in the gable. Overhead door open a few inches, if not fully open. Dunno the airchange number per hour, but many cubic meters enter per minute.
CO monitoring also. What outside of testing, never activated at harmful levels.

 

[ERRN]

I have all my forging stuff relatively mobile. I have my forge on a cart and I slide my anvil and bock outside when I forge, then put it away when I’m done.

This is what I’m considering...making everything more mobile and maybe go out in the driveway, or at least half way out the main door.

 

[JTknives]

You won’t need a whole ton of space but you need anough to safely walk around your hot items with out burning your self. On thing to keep in mind is grinding dust is one of the most flammable things we have in our shop. My wife is really good at sweeping up after me as I move onto other processes. But just the other day I had done a bunch of grinding and there was a nice clump of dust under the grinder. I was on the other side of the shop with the abrasive saw and a spark shot over and landed in the dust. I look up and the pile is smoking. I go over and it was a nice size smoldering hot spot. Dust won’t burst into flames but more turns into glowing embers. I had a close call in my last shop on my grinder bench. My grinder is mounted to wood and that was a bolted to the wood bench. There was a small gap between the base and bench. It had filled with dust and caught a spark. It smoldered for a good while while I was going somthing else. Went back to the grinder and fired it up and the blowing air from the grinder kicked it up and caught the wood on fire. Not bad just a small area but enough to really open your eyes to what can happen. So double check everything. At work when we do hot work we have to stay on sight for 1hr after and then check it every 1hr for 4hrs. So I try to do that at home. Not worth loosing a shop or in your case your house because you did not want to be bothered doing a triple check.

One thing about a forge that a lot of people don’t think about is moisture. A propane forge puts out a crazy amount of water into the air. So if your shop is cold in the winter and you fire it up all you metal tools and equipment is going to condensate water. So keep everything oiled up good and wiped down.

 

[ERRN]

You won’t need a whole ton of space but you need anough to safely walk around your hot items with out burning your self. On thing to keep in mind is grinding dust is one of the most flammable things we have in our shop. My wife is really good at sweeping up after me as I move onto other processes. But just the other day I had done a bunch of grinding and there was a nice clump of dust under the grinder. I was on the other side of the shop with the abrasive saw and a spark shot over and landed in the dust. I look up and the pile is smoking. I go over and it was a nice size smoldering hot spot. Dust won’t burst into flames but more turns into glowing embers. I had a close call in my last shop on my grinder bench. My grinder is mounted to wood and that was a bolted to the wood bench. There was a small gap between the base and bench. It had filled with dust and caught a spark. It smoldered for a good while while I was going somthing else. Went back to the grinder and fired it up and the blowing air from the grinder kicked it up and caught the wood on fire. Not bad just a small area but enough to really open your eyes to what can happen. So double check everything. At work when we do hot work we have to stay on sight for 1hr after and then check it every 1hr for 4hrs. So I try to do that at home. Not worth loosing a shop or in your case your house because you did not want to be bothered doing a triple check.

One thing about a forge that a lot of people don’t think about is moisture. A propane forge puts out a crazy amount of water into the air. So if your shop is cold in the winter and you fire it up all you metal tools and equipment is going to condensate water. So keep everything oiled up good and wiped down.

Your process kind of covers my fears I think. I also build custom guitars, so sawdust is common in my shop. I keep a clean shop, and clutter free, but the idea of that one smoldering piece of something finding a crack with some hardwood dust and smoldering for a few hours before lighting my home up has kept me from even seriously considering the few nice anvils I’ve passed on recently. I could see myself checking every hour after just to make sure.

 

[JTknives]

I have never had a problem with scale from forging just the grinding dust and sparks.