Makeshift coal/charcoal forge

My cheap propane forge was a bust, so I am saving up for a better one. In the meantime I made this from sand and left over pottery clay I had, since we don't have clay in South Florida! Hopefully it works, still drying. Hoping to test it within a few days.

90% of the fill is pretty much sand and a little bit of root that inevitably gets dug up... again, we don't have simple dirt here.

Nice, what sort iof things do you use the forge for?

if your interested there are lots of great ideas on making a forge with an old brake drum on YouTube. most auto repair places will give you old brake drums for free
just an idea

John C Daley wrote:Nice, what sort iof things do you use the forge for?

It’s my dream but beyond my capacity to make woodworking tools like the Japanese, so laminated metals. There’s no economically feasible way to do this in the US, the nice aogami steels they use are extremely expensive to import.

After I learn to make wood tools I want to make instruments like violins and guitars.

It's difficult to tell in the photo how big the firepot is, or where the tuyere comes in. Is this a side-blast blower? It kind of looks like it's designed after some broze-age through iron age forges, but with a deeper firepot and not as wide or tall of the sides. Love to see how it works.

I really sort of didn’t design it after anything. I looked at a bunch of JABOD photos and sort of simplistic forge photos and squished some clay with sand.

You can barely see the long pipe I have to cut sticking out the back. It’s angled slightly downward and right where the back curve of the clay pit begins. So it’s blowing across the bottom and then will ride the front curve up. No idea how it will work. I should be able to pile the coals around the side and pull in from back as needed. I might have to add some walls to the side.

Hi Jeff. I just wanted to invite you to contribute (when you feel like it) to this thread: https://permies.com/t/102321/Small-homemade-gadgets   It's all about gadgets we make, whether humble or ingenious, using whatever materials made sense or we happened to have on-hand.

Its a place where a number of us have posted pictures & stories or descriptions. The gadgets posted have been quite varied, and the one key idea is their usefulness for making our homestead/permies/self-reliant lives easier or more convenient. Of course, no reason why they couldn't be something one turns out for sale as part of cash income needed.