Old toilette bowl to hold my fire?

[JNewman]

There were many other pages as well.
The cheapest quickest forge I have seen was made in minutes and the only manufactured pieces where the two plastic grocery bags which were the bellows. An African kid demonstrated it to us. I should try to make one some time, if just to document how he did it.

Tell us more Daryl. I would love to hear how he used the bags as bellows.

[Daryl]

Tell us more Daryl. I would love to hear how he used the bags as bellows.

The forge was "Y" shape trench in the ground covered with wood and, dirt. At the two tips of the Y he weighted the bags with dirt and poked wholes in the bottom. He held the two bags so that when he opened his fingers they were open, close his hands so they were closed. So a bit of open hand lift fill with air close hand and push down. He worked a very small fire but already seeing what he could make with a small controlled fire was proof enough. I would assume in real life this was a two man operation.

I'll try to make one someday pictures are worth a 1000 words.

I also have a log forge that Peter Von Tiesenhausen made in 2010, Sandra D told me to take it home. You should ask her about it sometime.

[Roy Edward]

Hmmmm.... Do you tel everyone to dig a hole and use plastic bag bellows here.... or am I just special... My wife does call me Special Ed...


This forge idea came about because it seemed the most simple and least labor intensive way to start. I also have all the materials and tools to do it easily. I figure if I can stay mostly within the parts that I have here on the ranch I keep costs down and it helps to get rid of a bit more junk.

I bought this place 9 years ago and learned a lesson, when you buy 200 acres do not tell all of your friends about it, they will all decide that you have room for all of their excess junk. I also learned another lesson, while it only took 3 years to pile junk to the sky it has taken me five years since to get it close to being back to where I started.

My wife does not particularly care for the five acre salvage yard look around the house, and to be honest niether do I. It is quite handy having all of this metal available for building though. About all I have left for junk is 25 to 30 vehicles and many many tons of metal. I also produce a great deal of excess wood which would be quite usefull as a fuel for forge and foundry work.

I have read about and seen pictures of many low tech forges and foundrys built into the earth and using very little to create them, but I do enough digging as it is, and my back isn't what it used to bending over to work metal in a hole does not really seem all that attractive to me.

[Daryl]

Actually my suggestion was to look at something more conventional. I think the with amount of work that you would put into making the oil tank forge you could make a better forge, that is why I put the links there as a place for you to start looking.

The plastic bag thing was just a side note on a very simple forge.

[Roy Edward]

That is a very good I site, I was there a couple of days ago and copied everything on the site to my computer.

I have read through at least 500 sites in the last five days, I have been reading and studying this for just over 30 years now, I just have never had the time before or really the place to build anything like this.

I liked the site you posted because of the down to earth approach of getting started.

1.) How big do I need to build?... Well what work do you intend to do even in the distant future?..... My answer, everytime I build a goat pen I have to get hinges, I keep looking at the sets that they sell at Spence, they are simple and will last forever but they want $25 a set. I can easily afford $25 but the point is it is not worth that much, at most they should be around 3 or 4 dollars a set, so I will not buy them, which leaves me without the hinges I need. I have welded up a few myself and they work great, but the best to make them is really to forge them. This type of work would be by far my most common.

I also like to make knifes and axes, so far I have only made them from scrap metal, I simply tool them down and sharpen them and then use them. This would probably be the second most common thing I would use a forge for.

I like to make things, I could have really used a forge when I made my hydraulic wood splitter, I don't like the cheap ones they sell, they are way to slow, so I built my own. I powered it off my case backhoe by coupling into one of the pod hydraulic lines. The hydraulic blade really moves and will split basically anything, and it will split it fast, a little too fast at times it will throw split wood 20 feet. I had to rebuild the splitting head three times, welding is great but really not the greatest in that venture.

I would also like to use a forge in making some better premade gates for the goat and sheep pens, meaning I could be working pieces as long as four to six feet. I figure there is little likelyhood that I am going to pound out 6 feet of material in one heating so I decided that 3 feet should be enough length on the coal bed.

I have Marfans syndrome which gives me a bit of heart trouble, at age 42 I have had two heart attacks, my heart just doesn't pump as it should and I tend to overheat very easily, I save all my wood splitting for winter when I can do it at 0 to 20 degrees and be comfortable. Anything above 60 degrees and I am starting to wilt, the idea of being in an enclosed building with a forge does not turn my crank so whatever I build will be stand alone outside. Along with my heart trouble I have Kufosis, which a stretching of the ligaments in the lower back, basically I have a hard time keeping my vertebrea in the places they are supposed to be causing a great deal of lower back pain. Whatever system I make will need to be at a hieght where I am not bending over constantly. I get enough bending over as it is running chainsaw cutting wood.


The next thing the site mentions is the hood setup and the chimney, or at least that was the next thing I studied.

I am not going to have a building so the hood becomes a little bit trickier in design. As far as chimney goes I can simply make my own from sheet metal so no problem there whatever the design.

When I studied the hood I paid particularly close attention to the idea of smoke escaping and bugging you, I wanted to make sure I have a good hood that works well even at the expense of variability in my setup. I hack and cough and sneeze constantly 365 days a year no matter what, and that is without being around smoke... and I don't even smoke...

My next concern was the fire tray, and so I looked at what info they had on that, I am not going to try to fool myself I am too cheap to be willing to pay the price or even the shipping to buy one so was trying to figure out what to use that would not simply fall aprt or melt in short order. In my studies over the last few days I had run across a site that had mentioned that toilettes are fired at 2500 f, I figured it is doubtfull that I would ever run hotter than that so I got to thinking that maybe a toilette bowl would work. When I went out later that night measuring things I realised that would only do really small material. So I looked at the back and thought about cutting it with my new diamond ceramic tile cutting wheel. When I measured it out it wound up working out perfectly for the dimensions, so I figured that providence had spoken.

In trying to come up with a design, I wanted something self supporting without requireing bolts or frame, something one piece and very solid. I wanted something wide enough and long enough and preferably something very easy to hood. This is where I decided to consider the tank. It requires no frame, no bolts, no drilling, no welding and is as solid as you could hope for, it also has enough wieght not to worry about it moving around on me while I am trying to work. They are a bit too short to just run flat on the ground, because I want my top to be at over head hieght so I will have to raise ground level a bit but that is easy and no real effort.

As far as building I will have about 30 minutes invested in cutting and grinding, about 30 minutes to an hour to cut up the toilette tanks, about 10 minutes of adding the clay and probably around 30 minutes to an hour building the chimney. I should be invested in it, the wear and tear on my 25$ diamond tile cutting wheel, about $7 in grinding stones, about 50 cents or so in rivetts, and around $1 or so in old salvage tin laying around.

To provide air I can use anything from an auto heater fan squirrel cage or more than one, to my air compressor or any other of the many fan setup I have, it should not take more than about an hour or so to get some kind of air hooked up. The pipeing may either be bought or just welded out of junk I have around here. If I buy it I imagine I will be invested around $20 for the pieces and fittings.

To build this I will likely invest about 4 to 6 hours of time total and around 20$ to 40$ dollars. I can't imagine I can really go to wrong with that. In taking the time to build this I would like to still be using it 30 years from now, so one major factor is that it be tough and last.

In doing my homework on this I have noticed that most forges basically look like an open table with a fancy hood over the top, a very simple design, but you might also consider that I have dry grass around most of the year and I would prefer a more enclosed system, I also do not have the intention of a building around my forge making the hood a bit trickier, and I am not building a fancy frame to hold up a hood.


Does anyone see any reason as to why this forge design will not workwell?...

My biggest concerns again are longevity, solidness, enclosed firepit, lack of smoke, and being able to deal with the temperatures physically.

[Daryl]

My first question would be what type of thermal shock can the porcelain take? I have no experience in the matter other than breaking several of my wife favorite pottery bowls in the oven at a low setting 250-300ºF warming up left overs.

[Roy Edward]

From the left over in the ceramic bowl breaking description I am going to guess "thermal shock" to be how fast can it be heated?....

My answer would be absolutely no clue and would have never thought about it until you mentioned it. I was concerned about the potential of there being moisture in the ceramic and exploding so I figured I would bake it for a few hours in the oven outside before trying to use it. Once installed in the forge I would place the cut out piece of metal back in place to protect from moisture getting into the forge when not in use.

I suppose I could easily test a piece of the lid ceramic and heat it up as fast as I can and see if it cracks and breaks.

I would imagine that as long as it is not full of moisture that taking the heat up gradually would keep it from fracturing. Worst case scenario I simply use the soil in there to hold my coals and run my air pipes down the sides through the soil, just make a shallow depression in the soil and air coming from the sides of the depression blowing across the surface to the middle.

Thanks for bringing that up, I do not much enjoy things exploding near me, especially when they are sharp, I have some serious scars on my hand from some bad chisel experiences.

[Neil Gustafson]

I just realized that you are using this FORUM as a DayCare.

I think it is time for a change, yours are full.

Neil

[Marty]

I just realized that you are using this FORUM as a DayCare.

I think it is time for a change, yours are full.

Neil

what are you talking about????