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I've been using a brick stack forge for over 4 years. It has evolved a bit over the years which is a big advantage to this design. For general forging and billet welding I have a 2.5" x 3" x 9" working volume.
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And for heat treating I expand the volume about 6x and add the pipe muffle.
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A piece of charcoal in the pipe produces a CO atmosphere eliminating scaling and the large volume makes holding an even controllable heat much easier.
Thanks for sharing this information. You sure produce some terrific blades with this setup.
I've seen Vics setup in his shop. I had no idea of what I was looking at besides a pile of stacked bricks. Then he fired it up and there was some serious flame going on! I just know like evnpar that Vic puts out some really nice blades. Oh, and the belt sander was really cool too Vic. Puts my Harbor Freight belt sander to shame! And when he showed me how he just braces his arm up to hold the blade for sanding, I was blown away!
Your an artist Vic!
oh my, that is gorgeous! simple, cost efficient, elegant, versitle!!
those look like hard firebricks also? and regular fireplace cement from menards? and a homebrew atmospheric burner?
I bet you could set up the bricks in a circular tower type fashion and use it for casting aluminum and copper pretty easy also.
I love it!
I was just on the phone early this morning to a young fella that comes by the shop once in awhile to make knives, and he wanted to get some refractory blanket and satinite from me to build a forge. huge thing from what he described, like 14" diameter and 54" long {dang near as big as my sword forge}, and all for $50!! next time he comes over I'm going to show him this one.
It's all soft brick. The floor was constructed of all broken soft brick pieces that I had collected over the years. As a welder I had occasional use for fire bricks and small pieces of same. The floor has been patched from flux damage with Satanite and crushed soft brick. The soft bricks do deteriorate from thermal cycling, but I just glue them back together with Satanite. The three bricks at the burner are mortared down onto the floor so that the burner nozzle is mortared in place, then I just dry stack what ever I need from there.
Hard bricks are too much of a heat sink to use.
I like the way you get things done. That forge rocks, or it is rocks :) very cool.
It makes me feel like an idget for making another forge this week.
spazola, there is nothing wrong with having more forges! I have 4 forges plus a propane/waste oil furnace for casting in the shop, and a coal forge in storage, and am trying to convince myself that I don't have the room or the need for one like bluesmans.
bluesmans, gotcha, the color that I see in those pics look just like some hard bricks I have.
when patching those soft bricks with satinite, how well does the repair hold? the couple one brick forges that I made for a friend, we wired the outside of the brick to keep them together after awhile.
The repair seems almost as strong as the brick. In other words the next time the brick fails it is not always at the joint. I think that the Satanite gets stronger after it is fired. For thicker repairs the Satanite with crushed brick seems best. Repairs done in the evening can be put in service the next morning.
