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By Dave, March 3, 2007 11:56 pm

Needed a punch to make the holes in the ladle bowl and handle so this is what I made to get the job done. Made from a piece of 1/2 inch steel shafting. Fairly hard stuff.

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By Dave, March 3, 2007 11:54 pm

Made a ladle for watering the coal from the slack tub. Ladle body was a piece of thick walled exhaust pipe. Handle was a piece of 1/4 inch electric fence post. Rivets were 16 penny nails cut off about a quarter inch from the head. Rivets were set hot.

My slack tub ladle, in all it’s glory… 😉

Back of bowl showing rivets connecting handle.

And the scroll at the end of the handle. Comfortable to use and easy to control. Over all I am rather pleased with it.

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By Dave, March 3, 2007 11:47 pm

Built a new forge yesterday (friday). Pix and a bit of bs follow.

This is the barrel I started with. Tis an old project of my dads from many years ago. Now a forge for me! Removed the brake rotors from each end and cut more out around the existing hole.

This is the burner assembly out of a 5 radiant gas heater. A few plumbing fittings and a air line quick connect fitting and it becomes the air blower system for the new forge. I ran this all day long today and the compressor came on 6 or 7 times total. I think this is a very effective air control system.

Air hookup. Will change the air quick connect to the other side of the forge and make the connecting line out of copper pipe to prevent hot metal hitting the plastic air line (again)…

Before legs and clay this is what it looked like.

First fire. Clay has just been packed in and fire lit.

A piece of spring heated to working temp. Note firebrick in background. Am now using several of them to contain and shape the fire. Working very well. Over all I am very pleased with this design. I am going to build another one out of strictly hardware store available plumbing parts to do a demo on how to build a compressed air aspirated coal fired 55 gallon drum forge.

Ran this one for 8 hours today and burned about 20 to 25 pounds of coal. Maybe. Need to get the scales out and weigh the coal and see what the consumption is. Compressor came on 6 or 7 times that I remember.

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By Dave, March 3, 2007 11:28 pm

These were made out of a bar of steel 3/8 thick x 3/4 wide x 24 inches long. Each jaw is 1/2 half that bar. Hours and hours and hours and lots of beating with a hammer. But they work so nice. So I guess it was all worth it. 😉 Now to make another 6 to 8 pair. Gonna use 1/2 inch coil spring for the next few pair.