Ventilation Concerns

H

hoosier784

Joined
Mar 17, 2007
Messages
13
For those of you who forge in your garage or other fairly enclosed space, what type of ventilation do you recommend?

I am looking at setting up a forge in my two stall garage and would appreciate your advice.
 
I have my forge on casters to move outdoors to forge, if you can't/don't want to do that then place your forge near the door openings, open the doors, run a fan pointing from the interior to the outdoors and get a CO2 detector. I don't really like the idea of running forges indoors without a ventilation hood.
 
My shop is split in two halves, one is heated the thother is open. I live in Northern Wisconsin so when the temps get real cold I run the forge on the heated side. I installed a very simple hood with 12" spiral duct and a barn fan. I built a box around the barn fan and used it to transition to the spiral. It works great for forging and welding. I still open a window and a door when I fire up the forge.
 
Sigh.. yeah yeah yeah... CO something detector :p My shop also has a BS detector, gotta turn it off when I invite other makers over ;)
 
A great many of the operations that you do to make a knife, produce toxins.
Welding, drilling certain handle materials, cleaning solvents or combinations of them, grinding, buffing, gluing, using contact cement. Just about any operation you might think of in a knife shop is not good for your longevity.

My smithy is totally enclosed; but has three exhaust systems at different key positions in the shop. One of those is over the gas forge itself.
There is a carbon monoxide and a carbon dioxide censor mounted in the forge area. Neither has gone off in the last 7 years.

Make very certain that your forge is burning properly and not producing a lot of the toxins that causes we humans to "wilt" prematurely.:eek::D

Fred
 
Another thing to think about is that detectors have a component that breaks down so the dectectors have a life span, generally between 5 and 10 years depending on the type of unit.
 
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