Forges???

[Chris Meyer]

The key here is "once it's warmed up". Since the forge shell is made from castable refractory, it takes longer to come up to heat.
-d

Deker is quite right, the cast refractory forges do take a while to warm up, probably 20 to 30 minutes for mine. You can heat them faster, but Tim warns that that will reduce the life of the shell. However, once they are warmed up, the cast refractory holds the heat, so you don't get big dips when you put cold steel into the forge. The work also comes up to temperature very quickly. The part that is really cool is, when I'm heat treating a piece of steel, my whole forge is the same temp and color, so the knife almost disappears from view. (I'll have to post a picture later.)

Although I am very happy with my Zowada forge, I would like to put together a small forge, perhaps based on Don Fogg's design, for those times that I just want to do some quick forging and be done with it.