This is my old champion ferriers forge, it was at an auction last year, it was a benefit auction, and I helped a freind of mine get some carpentry he made up to the auction, and saw it sitting there! I had campers that Saturday so I couldn’t go, I asked another freind who loves auctions to get it for me…I will go to 250 I said, he got it for 100! Can’t buy the blower for that!
Some work on the home made “grate” at the bottom and the air flow is much better!
Oh and you will see my forge supervisory crew also, oliver alice and Sofie,
Ah! Leg vices - now there is something I may have more of around where I’m from here. $20 for one would be a steal though! I think I got both of mine for… $110 or something - one 5" the other is 4.5", good threads.
I’ll snap a shot this weekend and post it under vises.
Ok, so I quickly realized why smiths have smith forges and ferriers have theirs, but I need a moveable thing to get out of the porch and put away, so I found a clay area and dug up a good bit of clay, mixed it in water to get it homogeneous and let it dry to a consistency that could be molded to fill the forge, creating a “firebox” and “table” area where all I had before was a big open dish. Any thoughts on if this will work or not?
I figure if it doesn’t the clay will come out easily!
The clay looks good! I’m a bit confused as to it’s purpose. What was different about this forge? Farrier forges should work fine, the original shot you had showed coal already in it… Looked ready to go!
Hard to see the firepot area, assuming that is a sort of air nozzle on the top there?
Yeah, the previous owner put an outy on the air outlet! It’s like a raised grate.
So the issue I had was really an operator issue I think, having only lit a coal fire three times, I was getting coal in the fire from the side and the fire was getting all mixed up. I would get it shoved off center then the air was not “in” the fire. And I couldn’t get any thickness of fire going, meaning I ended up with about two inches of fire under the work, due to the fire squishing out flat.
There may be a day where my fire tending skills will improve, but for now I feel like having a 5" deep hole that contains the fire in a given area will help me a lot, plus my stock can set on the clay like a table horizontal to the fire not nosing down into it.
The forge as it was, was just a big 3ft dish 5" deep, no refractory or “pot” of any type, like a huge upside down trash can lid! The first shots had about two and a half 5 gal buckets of coal in it to give an idea of the volume this thing has…
I lit a handful of cherry hand plane shavings in it and got a three foot flame going with the blower where before it was 18" or so, hopefully that means my air is more consentrated into the firepot area now. A few small fires to dry it out and I’ll update you!
So small fires just made the water in the clay explode, so a couple of weeks drying and fired it up today…so much better! The air is feeding a contained fire and less air makes a bigger temp. The dished out area keeps the depth of fire nice and deep, and the flat area allows my work pieces to stay horizontal to the fire. I made one half of a bolt tong and a spring fuller, the bolt tong half looks good but I whacked the fuller to see how I liked the way it was when it was at full hardness and it cracked…duh!
