one brick forge question

Leu Custom

Leu Custom

Joined
Jun 2, 2007
Messages
1,354
made a 1 brick forge for fun and used a bernzomatic ts8000 torch with mapp gas. to make a long story short, the top and one side develop a large crack. is mapp gas way too hot? it was sitting on another soft firebrick. did the cooling down too fast cause it to crack? how do i prevent this from happening with the next brick i drill out? thank you in advance
 
My one brick forges always developed cracks eventually...I used to just wrap some wire around them to hold them together, then just re-make a new forge from a new brick when they got really bad.

You could always go to home depot and get some furnace cement to seal the cracks...
 
David Schott said:
My one brick forges always developed cracks eventually...I used to just wrap some wire around them to hold them together, then just re-make a new forge from a new brick when they got really bad.

You could always go to home depot and get some furnace cement to seal the cracks...
Click to expand...

ahhh so the cracking is normal. but after one use? lol. for a whole 5 minutes
 
They usually crack, period. But, I found that you can get more life out of them by not heating too quickly.

Eventually, they will crack and you just need to patch them together.
 
You can wrap it with strong wire to keep it together. Also, you can seal the cracks up with high temp furnace cement from the hardware store.
 
when i had mine it cracked on the first heat. i got some copper wire and wrapped it up tight and worked great, well it worked as good as a one brick forge could. but it was cheep and did what i needed it to do. i think about how much i have spend on my current forge and it makes the one brick forge seem like almost free. but it is a starting place and will work for you in tell you have the money to invest into a good forge, i have put allmost $700 into my forge so far and i hope I'm done.
 
JTknives said:
when i had mine it cracked on the first heat. i got some copper wire and wrapped it up tight and worked great, well it worked as good as a one brick forge could. but it was cheep and did what i needed it to do. i think about how much i have spend on my current forge and it makes the one brick forge seem like almost free. but it is a starting place and will work for you in tell you have the money to invest into a good forge, i have put allmost $700 into my forge so far and i hope I'm done.
Click to expand...

Ah cool. Thought I did something wrong. and by the way, I sent you a PM and never got a reply ! :p

I made it cos I have several bars of 1095 that I wanna make some knives out of and instead of using my kiln (which is far far away!) I thought i'd heat treat them and make some temperlines! Cracked my first 1095 blade too last night quenching it too high in temperature! Was fun I must say
 
Leu Custom said:
how do i prevent this from happening with the next brick i drill out?
Click to expand...

How about a 2 brick forge a little dressed up. ;)

small_forge2.jpg


Pad
 
I make "two brick" versions of "one bricks" but use three bricks...

The heat hole is on the centerline of two full bricks and half way through a pair of half bricks... lets me turn the pair of two half bricks 180 and have a short or long three brick two brick. The extra mass doesn't crack as badly and holds together longer after it does crack.

The only limits with soft brick forges (searching "insulating or insulated brick" will find them) is the length of blade that will fit and they don't get hot enough to weld. I forge, normalize, spheroidize anneal, stress relieve, soak and austenitize with one. A person can pull the burner and use it to differentially temper, also.

Propane is plenty enough fuel for the size of the heat hole in a brick forge, no matter if a one or a two.

Mike
 
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