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brand new to forging

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paulc:
so what is a reasonable, cheap oven/furnace for a beginner?  I have a couple rail road spikes that I could heat and hammer on...would coal or wood fired heat be enough?  Blower needed?

I have access to old propane tank, 2 or 3 gallon size, that I could cut up and insulate...somehow get a fire inside it?

Thanks for the help.  You tube links you like?

Paul

TrevorM:
I believe you do need a blower with coal to get it hot enough, not sure if you could use wood.

For the old propane tanks check out this post, osage outlaw did a great job: https://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,64724.0.html

Mr. Woolery:
My primary forge was meant to be a stopgap until the refractory materials for a larger forge could be obtained. I have the larger forge, but seldom use it.

I used two soft fire bricks (hard ones don’t really insulate, spend the extra couple of bucks on soft bricks) and hollowed a half cavity in each. Either bind them together with chicken wire or make a sheet metal trough for them. I had the sheet steel lying around.

The heat comes from a large pencil tip torch head made by Mag Torch. That’s about $25. Also a hose that is meant to connect a camp stove to a 20 pound propane tank. I get 25-30 hours from the tank, which is a lot. Refilling it costs me about $15. (Go some place that actually fills it because those tank exchanges charge $20 and only put 15 pounds in.)

I’ll try to attach a couple of photos.

Patrick

Mr. Woolery:
I’ve been preaching the gospel of the tiny forge for years. Nobody wants to use a little one until they try mine.

I make mostly small to medium knives. I can heat treat a 6” blade, which is more knife than most folks will ever need. My primary steel is overhead garage door coil springs. I can get a railroad spike to forging temperature in this little forge, but by the time I spread the blade portion enough to be thin enough, it gets too wide for the opening. I do spikes in the bigger forge.

If you want a spike knife, make sure the letters HC are stamped on the head. It won’t make a great knife, but I can get them hard enough to make a decent knife.

And if you can take a class locally, it is very much worth it for all the learning curve that you can skip over. I took a two hour class, made 3 nails and a hook. It was $160 through the local folk school. Worth every penny. Those 2 hours probably saved me two weeks of figuring it out on my own.

Patrick

DC:
Could a person just use a tiger torch? Maybe with a few alternations?

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