My first forge - and it works too!

C

CShepherd

Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
1,085
Hello all,

Bit of introduction first since I'm somewhat new here. I am new to knifemaking, having only done a couple of knives from Northcoast knives but I am totally hooked. Having a great interest in making my own knife designs I decided to start doing stock removal. With that in mind, and with the help of these forums and Darren Ellis I have built my first forge.

Here are some photos.

I started with a 120mm mortar tube I got from work (I work for a shooting sports wholesaler). Looked like it would be a great size.
120mmMortartube.jpg


Here's the complete forge. I used 2" of Inswool, coated it with Satanite, then used 1/3 of a hard firebrick for the floor. You'll notice that everything is bolted together since I have no experience welding and don't currently know anyone. In addition I was inspired by the $50 Knife book by Goddard to use what I had as much as possible. Well, I have a drill and bolts so that's what I used.

forgelidclosedcomplete.jpg


I am going to have to change the front door a bit. Doesn't quite seem to work like I wanted. I can in all honesty run it with the door off and it works just the same. Here's a pic of the inside of the forge.

forgeinsidelidopen.jpg


It is has approximately 8" of usable space. So far I've only ran it with regular propane. I have Mapp gas and am looking foward to trying that.

Forgerunninglidopen.jpg


I took a large file blade to non-magnetic with it in about 10 minutes so I was quite tickled by that.

I do see a few things I would change.
1. Taller legs. Make it easier to adjust the torch input. May not matter if I switch to a forced air burner, which is likely.
2. Different door. The current one doesn't do much. Will tinker with it some more to see if I can get it to work like I want it too.
3. If I stayed with the current torch setup I will need to enlarge the hole in the side just a bit to fit the flame size better.

Any comments or suggestions are always welcome as I have lots to learn. Thanks to all who posted here with ideas and suggestions and thanks to Darren Ellis for his help getting the supplies I needed.

Charles
 
A shooting sports wholesaler that deal in 120 mm mortars? Thats some pretty serrious artillery. If your just planning to use the forge for heat treating I'd do away with the hard fire brick on the bottom. It would heat up alot faster especially with the torch as a burner.
 
Nice set up Charles. What a great feeling to get your first forge built and

running.
Fred
 
Cool, man! I had a bunch of fun putting mine together, my guess is you did too!

I'd recommend doing a coat of ITC-100 over the Satanite (you can get it from Darren, too)... it increased the efficiency of my forge dramatically!
 
Funny thing is that we have tons of these, the empty tubes that is, back from when it was fashionable for certain, sort of, survival types, during a certain, sort of, wierd time when the world was supposed to end, to bury certain, sort of, weapons and other essentials. Anyway, saw them and thought that it would work great for a forge. So far I think it'll work great and the part of the tube you see is what's left, so I have options for other sizes and such.

Later,

Charles

Raymond Richard said:
A shooting sports wholesaler that deal in 120 mm mortars? Thats some pretty serrious artillery. If your just planning to use the forge for heat treating I'd do away with the hard fire brick on the bottom. It would heat up alot faster especially with the torch as a burner.
Click to expand...
 
Mr. Purple,

It was actually a blast to research and put together. Little scary the first time I ran it but to see it glow inside was really neat. I'll definetely look into the ITC-100. If it makes it more efficient, then it saves money on gas so I can spend more on steel. :-)

docdred,

I do believe you're right about the addicting part. I've always loved knives since being a kid, and to now start making my own is awesome. I've done a couple of kit knives and thought that was awesome too but really want to make my own blades.

Vinny203,

My wife just rolled her eyes when I explained why we sold 120mm mortar tubes in the first place. She doesn't come from a shooting, hunting, or much of an outdoor background other than rv camping.

Thanks so much to all who have replied. I will certainly post some pics of some projects, however ugly or good they turn out.

Charles
 
Looks first rate I would think you might as well go all the way and build a burner to go with it. It does not look like you are lacking the skill.
Cheers Ron.
 
Hi Charles,

That came out looking pretty good! Save me one of those Mortar tubes, I'd like to check one out. I'm in the process of building up 50 burners, I'll set one aside to loan you to try when I get them finished, maybe we can arrange to drop by to pick one up in a few weeks if you're down this way, I think you'll like it better than the smaller burner...

:)

-Darren
 
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