joesouth rocks!! check out the forge he made me

R

richard j

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Apr 1, 2007
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joe came down a few years ago with cjpgeyer and after telling him how i do my heat treat he said he would make me a forge so i could do it easier. i can do a blade that is 13" long and 3 1/2" wide. now i'll be able to make some bigger knives :D

joe lives up in canton ohio and since i am not able to travel far, a member that goes by still.learning who is from pittsburg was coming down to learn how to sharpen scissors and knives on the paper wheels. his girlfriends uncle lives in canton so they went over to joes and picked up the forge for me after visiting with her uncle. i'm anxious to see how well it works. before i do any knives i'm going to do some experimenting just to make sure i can get the results i want.


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chuck, i hope to have it figured out by the time you come over and have a few knives made to heat treat.
carl, i think my dad would get a little mad if i heat treated a knife in the front room :D. i am anxious to see how hot i can get a piece of steel in it. joe said i should be able to forge weld in it but i'm not going to be doing any forging.
 
12345678910 said:
Are you going to give it a satinite coating first?
Click to expand...

If you don't coat it you will be breathing the fibers from the Kwool or whatever they used in the inside. Breathing the fibers is simaliar to breathing asbestos and is very bad for your health. Sealing them will keep the fibers from becoming airborne with every use!

I borrowed this from http://refractory.elliscustomknifeworks.com/


Do I need to coat the fibers in the Inswool with anything?

Yes, Once you have the Inswool liner in place, you will need to top-coat it with Satanite and/or ITC-100 to protect the liner as well as stabilize the fibers in the ceramic fiber blanket once the forge is in use. Inswool does not present any dangers to the user when lining the forge, other than an irritant much like fiberglass. However, upon heating to temperatures above about 1600 degrees F, free silicates can form that you do not want to breathe. Top-coating the fiber with Satanite and/or ITC-100 seals the Inswool and keeps everything in place. If at any point you poke a hole in the Satanite/ITC-100 top-coating, you'll want to patch the hole with some more Satanite. Also, at some point in the future when you reline your forge, be sure to wear a respirator, gloves, and long sleeve shirt and try to directly dump the lining into an empty trash bag and seal it off. The dangers probably aren't as great as that last sentence may sound, but it's always better to err on the side of safety.

You should topcoat the Inswool with something like Satanite or ITC-100, or you could use a rigidizer such as InsTuff. We generally recommend a basecoat of 1/4" of Satanite and then a topcoat of ITC-100. This provides a more robust coating with the added efficiency obtained from the use of ITC-100. Generally, for most forges, a five pound bag of Satanite and a half pint of ITC-100 is sufficient.

By the way cool forge!
 
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Thats a great looking forge Richard!I need one.Will you make some type of stand to keep the blade upright?
 
i fired it up tonight outside for a few minutes just to see how well it worked. i need to get a set of tongs or a rod with a slot milled in the end with a setscrew to hold the blade so i can put it inside the forge. since i only like to heat treat the edge i'm going to try clay coating the blade and hold the blade sideways running it under the flame.

i'm going to read more on coating the inside of the forge. i was wondering if anything needed to be put on the inside when i was checking it out earlier toady.
 
i was on the phone trying to see if i could find something else that would work instead of the satinite and found out that asbestos is no longer allowed to be sold. if the material inside the forge is not asbestos do i still need to coat it?
 
Yes, you still need to coat it because:

  1. The glass insulation will produce silicates that are NOT good to breath.
  2. The glass insulation is very fragile and your forge will quickly wear out.
  3. Adding a coating like ITC-100 over the satanite will make your forge more efficient.
 
all i will be using the forge for will be heat treating blades i make and not forging. how long will the coatings last and roughly how much will i need to do the inside? the inside is just a tad wider than 3 1/2" and 13" deep.
 
Richard, the one pound bag of Satanite at Ellis here http://elliscustomknifeworks.hightemptools.com/refractorycoatings.html
will be more than enough. I have to re-line my main small forge maybe once a year, but I use it a lot. You should be able to get way better mileage if just HTing in yours.

Here is what Ellis has to say about ITC 100. My experience with it backs this up.
"ITC-100 is known for its ability to reduce fuel costs and help your forge reach higher temperatures in a quicker time frame."
They sell 1/4 pints here, which would also be enough for your forge.
http://elliscustomknifeworks.hightemptools.com/itcproducts.html

ITC is spendier, probably not necessary to you. It's good stuff, though.
 
Those pictures look great, I sure hope it works well for you.
It was a pleasure bringing it down for you, thank you for the wealth of knowledge you bestowed upon us in such a short time! I've sharpened at least a dozen knives since I got back home to Philadelphia, my butcher let me sharpen one of his crappiest filet knives, and he said in 27 years of butchering chicken he has never had a knife go so smoothly through a chicken breast - and it's 4 days later and he hasn't even touched it to a steel yet!
Thanks again, I look forward to my next chance to head out that way!
-SL
 
thanks for bringing the forge down to me. any time you want to come down just let me know. i'm glad to know i'm a good teacher when it comes to the wheels. (you're no longer a lurker either :D)
 
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