Forge?

[Ted]

OK, friday I was at a buds who's a scrapper. He had a double cast iron sink in the back of his truck as well as a table frame thingy made from 1/4 inch angle iron

So ?'s are, is lid a good idea or a waste of time? Do you have a the coals just laying in the bottom?

Any input? Do's, don'ts, all comments appriciated.

[gryffynklm]

So , what do you want to do with a lid?

[canid]

i imagine a cast iron sink would make a great forge. the drain would be perfect for a tuyere [air inlet]. it might be on the large side, but i would jump on it in a heartbeat.

you would probably still want to line it with a refractory material. mine is as simple as clay/sand directly from my subsoil, and it's working out well enough.

[canid]

So , what do you want to do with a lid?

i think that was a typo. he'll correct me if i'm wrong.

[gryffynklm]

Thats what I thought. Th problem with a sink is it's depth. The bowl on my coal forge is about 4" deep and 12" round. This allows enough coal to get a good high heat. and still get the metal in the hart of the pile of coal. You want your metal as flat to the bowl as possible for even heat. I would think the sink would force you to have your stock at an angle to the bowl or heat. Ted, post a pic of the sink, we may be able to suggest a modification.

[hunter63]

Pic's would nice, some of the sinks are steel over concrete, and wouldn't take heat too well.

[Ted]

Don't have a camera. Will try and get one soon.

It's a old cast iron porcilene coated sink, just like the old cast iron bath tubs. It's a double sink. So I was thinking, cut it in half, fill one half with coal and use the other for a lid. Figured a lid would generate more heat quicker.

As for too deep, I could always cut a slot in the side. Hell I don't know. I'll fugure something out!

Thanks for the input.

[gryffynklm]

OK, question 1

How deep and size of basin.

No lid for coal the pile of coal is an insulator and holds the heat in the pile.

Here is a link for a porcelain sink forge and quench basin combo. Give it a read.
http://www.vintageprojects.com/metal...hop-forge.html

from here we can figure things out.

[Ted]

Thanks Karl! Don't really know how deep it is yet. It was under a bunch of crap, so I was going to pick it up today after he dumped the rest of the crap. I could tell one side was deeper than the other.

Didn't get to pick it up, cause brake line leaking on my truck! I'll fix that tomarrow though, and pick up the sink.

Thanks again!

[gryffynklm]

I read the article after I posted it. They recommend using fir brick and refractory cement in the forge part. That is one of the recommendations I was going to make. If you set fire brick in the bottom if the sink (dry fit) and set the drain fittings on top of the brickthat would be good. The hight of my forge pan is 2" deep and the fire bowl is about 3 or 4 " deep. The shape of the bowl helps reflect focus the heat to the center of the bowl. I was thinking if you used a layer of fire brick and set the drain flange on that you can set in a layer of half thick brick around on top of the first layer and use refractory cement to form a bowl. The air tube and ash dump are about 2" in diameter. I would send a pipe down from the drain fitting to a T fitting. The one to the side will be for your blower, the straight end will be for your ash dump and should have a short nipple so your ash doesn't choke the air. The ash dump can be a piece of scarp metal large enough to cover the pipe end by 1/2 inch. Secure an "L" bracket with pipe clamp a hole at the edge of your scrap metal can be bolted to the L bracket so the metal can pivot to dump the ash.

When you get the sink let us know what parts you have like the drain and such.

[Ted]

Well after putting it off for some time, I finally bought some lump charcoal,and put the forge together. Fired it up the other night and annealed some mower blades...hope I didn't get them too hot and burned off the carbon, guess I'll find out when I try to harden them.

But anyway, here's my totaly free forge, well I bought the shop vac years ago! Other than that all the rest was trashed by sombody. The fire brick even was from a incinerator my company had torn down.

This thing is just thrown together too. The 2 in. copper pipe on the bottom is just slipped over the drain and wedged in place with a couple bricks. Just pull it off and dump it out! The filler is just clay from the yard and sand.

[crashdive123]

Well done Ted.

[Camp10]

You could fill the other sink with vermiculite and use it for annealing. Nice setup but how come there are no action pictures? Nice work Ted!

[klickitat]

nice job. Have you used it yet? What would you change if you could?

[canid]

You could fill the other sink with vermiculite and use it for annealing.

or fill it with water and use it for cooling tools.

[Ted]

nice job. Have you used it yet? What would you change if you could?

Thanks, I heated up some mower blades to nonmagnetic. It works fine, I guess, don't really know what I'm doing yet! I am making a grate to go over the drain, but other than that, I don't see any changes to be made...... yet.

Oh Camp , I'm saving the action shots for something worth shooting...LOL

[crashdive123]

You could fill the other sink with vermiculite and use it for annealing. Nice setup but how come there are no action pictures? Nice work Ted!

or fill it with water and use it for cooling tools.

or fill it with ice to keep your beer cold. You might get hot using the forge. One can never be too careful.

[Camp10]

Thanks, I heated up some mower blades to nonmagnetic. It works fine, I guess, don't really know what I'm doing yet!

Quick lesson on simple carbon metal...

If you heat it to non-magnetic and let it cool in the air, it will be normalized. This is the state that the steel "wants" to be in. It is neither hardened or softened and is at its strongest. It can be ground, drilled and worked in this form.

If you heat it to non-magnetic and quench it in oil (or water, but I would never recommend using it) it will be in a hardened state. This is a very stressful condition for the steel's structure and should be tempered asap. For simple steels, motor oil or olive oil seem to be a pretty good quenchant.

If you heat it to non-magnetic and allow it to very slowly cool (this is plain carbon steel only, some alloys have a very different process) it will be annealed. Dont keep it in the heat for more than a few minutes after becoming non-magnetic or you will just cook the carbon out of it. I use vermiculite and a few iron bars also heated to red hot to keep the heat loss slower. Some use ashes or sand.

Hope this helps a little..

[hunter63]

Well after putting it off for some time, I finally bought some lump charcoal,and put the forge together. Fired it up the other night and annealed some mower blades...hope I didn't get them too hot and burned off the carbon, guess I'll find out when I try to harden them.

But anyway, here's my totaly free forge, well I bought the shop vac years ago! Other than that all the rest was trashed by sombody. The fire brick even was from a incinerator my company had torn down.

This thing is just thrown together too. The 2 in. copper pipe on the bottom is just slipped over the drain and wedged in place with a couple bricks. Just pull it off and dump it out! The filler is just clay from the yard and sand.

Cool, project, will also be waiting for project reports, nice job!

[Ted]

Quick lesson on simple carbon metal...

If you heat it to non-magnetic and let it cool in the air, it will be normalized. This is the state that the steel "wants" to be in. It is neither hardened or softened and is at its strongest. It can be ground, drilled and worked in this form.

If you heat it to non-magnetic and quench it in oil (or water, but I would never recommend using it) it will be in a hardened state. This is a very stressful condition for the steel's structure and should be tempered asap. For simple steels, motor oil or olive oil seem to be a pretty good quenchant.

If you heat it to non-magnetic and allow it to very slowly cool (this is plain carbon steel only, some alloys have a very different process) it will be annealed. Dont keep it in the heat for more than a few minutes after becoming non-magnetic or you will just cook the carbon out of it. I use vermiculite and a few iron bars also heated to red hot to keep the heat loss slower. Some use ashes or sand.

Hope this helps a little..

Thanks! Helps a lot. I've read and read on this stuff,and the more I read the more confusing it gets!!!! LOL