Building a forge

[David R. Pennington]

That Buffalo forge should do just about anything you need to do. You know the limits of the rivet forge as I do. I currently have no roof on my shop. I plan to build one. Need to get one more through college first. I have a very nice cast Tuyre for a good brick forge- someday. The rivet forge is ok for small projects but extremely frustrating trying to get welding heats or larger work. Just can't get enough depth to the fire.

[heelerau]

Fired up the Buffalo this arvo in company with a roping mate who is both a blacksmith and farrier. Did no gun stuff, just a new poker and sorted out a damaged wrought iron hook, part of a hand made wrought iron  chain, hook and ring set I found in a dam many years ago.   Guess it is a matter of time before I have a go at forging a pistol barrel. We are going to convert one of our sheds to a proper smithy.

Cheers

Gordon

[Ryan McNabb]

This is a photo I took of one of the new Forges at the blacksmith shop at CW, before it was ever fired up.  You can see the iron tuyere coming in from the back.  It's about 7" square across the face and maybe 16" long front to back, and the back has a large cone shaped entry for the air inlet.  This is the same style used at the gun shop at Old Salem.  This is a casting you could easily have done at any number of foundries in the US.  You could easily make up your own master for next to nothing.  It's massive and should last for many years with no use of complicated water jackets.  If you ever burn it up, get a second one, slide the old one out, slide the new one in, make a fire. 

You could also put a slab of soapstone in front of this with a hole bored in it to correspond to the tuyere and it would probably never wear out.

[davet]

If its of any interest I,ve used both bottem and back blast fires over the years, my current forge is an Alcosa with a back bosch tank and water cooled tue iron never had a problem with it not getting up to heat using breeze coke just use a deep fire if its heavy stock and make sure to clean the clinker out at intervals as not doing will rob your fire of heat . The old industrial forge I got my fire from had cast body fires with up to six tue irons for shipwork they made anchor chains and such wish I,d took the time to photograph the old place as its now gone   

[whetrock]

Welcome to the forum, DaveT.  Glad to see we have another blacksmith joining the discussions.

Whet