Make a small, practical forge

INCOMING NEWS FROM THE KHAE!

i'mma making another instructable, showing what you can upgrade this to without much work. coming soon!


This instructable will show you how to make a small (no more than 2 feet by two feet) forge for melting lead and/or heating thin-ish steel to shape it.

Unfortunately, i only have pics of the forge in action, as i didnt think of making an instructable until i came in.

Be careful with this, as it can produce high temperatures and will almost certainly injure you if you touch the bricks after use. Give it about a 2 day cooldown period just to be safe.

Step 1 Bricks!

You need them. anything from 5-11 will work fine. If you only have 5, you can only make one layer though :(

Also, something to put underneath it. I used roofing slate, and although it cracked because of the heat, it kept it burning REAL hot.

Comments

[curvy77]

i have based my forge design of of this and has worked great. (kinda). after using both charcoal and wood i have found that while charcoal burns longer, wood burns hotter. perfect example is that my forge when first used had charcoal and burned well in a closed area for more heat.

howver when i switched to wood with an open furnace the briicks started exploding from intense heat.

[NinjaDude]

I start with wood, then add some coal. It burns longer and plenty hot. Works well for me, I like the low tech approach of this.

[hobbitboy]

i cot my wood in potroleam jelly and hand sanitizer it makes the flame hoter but dont get any on your hands or it will but them

[josh1324]

Great Instructable! I was looking at how to make a forge and all the other ones were too hard and expensive. :)

[khaeotixs]

ayeaye, but i wouldn't recommend building this for anything other than melting lead/heating thin steel When i build my new one, there'll be step-by-step instructions on how to build it and it should be grand. the one i'm working with at the minute is amazing, it follows the same basic design as this, but is square and uses a lot more bricks. if you want more info on my new forge, send me a message or a comment and i'll be glad to help

[bobo64]

plz make an insatructable fir it

[bakabr]

c'mon guy, just melting lead is a noob thing. u know what? u can do this simply using a tin/aluminum container and ur stove, c'mon, i know u r more intelligent than this guy, c'mon...

[Crail]

So, what's the deal with a burn permit on this. Yes, no, depends on...?

[Crail]

nevermind, just figured out it wasn't an open flame

[iloveairsoftstuff]

no offense, and i realize that i am not an expert in this area, but lets just say there are better ibles.

[khaeotixs]

There are. i've improved this massively since then. it now runs on coal and is highly efficient... melted thin steel plate a while ago :( it was my crucible for melting lead... i looked back and had lost the bottom of the crucible.

[joey2542667]

Is it possible to melt alunimum foil?

[Aar000n3y]

Unless you super size this, no. The melting point of aluminum is 1220 degrees F, and he said it can melt lead, so the forge probably goes up to about 621 degrees F (melting point of lead). Just google the material and 'melting point' and you can usually find the temperature pretty easily

[Aklash, The hunchback]

your plain old average campfire can get steel and iron red hot as well as melting lead

[volquete]

could it melt steel?

[joey2542667]

It would take alot of heat but it may be possible. just make sure that for the crucible you use something that has a much higher melting temperature than steel.

[joey2542667]

ok

[khaeotixs]

you could do it if you added a better air system... mostly what i used was my own lungs and the natural draw, which usually lead to me being out of breath

[joey2542667]

lol, OK well I have an air compressor.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Blow dryer works good too. btw. And a cheap low-power one will be less expensive to run then your compressor. You won't get as much air pressure, but that really shouldn't be an issue. It should be plenty for aluminum. Aluminum foil melted can be used like paint. Very neat effect.

[joey2542667]

OK thanks

[Grey_Wolfe]

If you decide to use the paint idea, be careful. If you use it on glass make sure the glass is fairly warm first. Think ice is hot water, only more dangerous. You probably already realize that, but I figured it was worth saying.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Ice IN hot water. Weird typo, only missed by half the keyboard. lol

[joey2542667]

lol ok, thanks

[joey2542667]

With this forge.

[thoraxe]

With this forge or in general?

[ardo6969]

could it harden and temper steel

[ardo6969]

could it melt steel or not

[Sora_1_2]

Is the roofing slate or whatever I decide to use just to keep the ground from burning or what?

[octavian234]

what are the melting points of some metals like nickel, iron, copper, aluminum, tin, lead, and steel

[halberdear]

well copper is about 2000 degrees tins is about 600 degrees steel is like 5000 degrees aluminum is 1200 degrees iron is about 1800 degrees and nickel is 2700 dgre

[Gryle]

With the exception of steel, all of your listed metals are elements. A good periodic table should tell you what you want know. Wikipedia and a Material Safety Data Sheet are also good sources for information on metals.

[zerrodach]

cool instructable but can it melt anything besides lead? because lead is soft and poisenous, and i dont like handling it

[gibsonlp96]

can this melt tin and copper, cuz i have a copper sword and tons of tin around, and wanted to make a bronze blade

[thoraxe]

hey try melting pennies b4 you ruin your sword. Make sure they're pre 1984 pennies though. After that they contain zinc, which will burn and be poisonous. If you do get it melted, put the tin into the copper after it's melted, or else the tin will burn away.

[notjustsomeone]

I don't mean to be rude but pennies shifted from 95% copper in 1982. Starting in 1983 all pennies are 97.5% zinc. In 1982 pennies were made of copper and zinc so just to be safe and make sure you're getting copper don't use any after 1981.

[thoraxe]

really? so thats why i found melted zinc and saw green flames when i melted that 84 penny.....hmm..thanks for that

[notjustsomeone]

Smug but wrong. The reason you saw green flames is because a penny minted in 1984 has an outer shell of pure copper with a zinc core. In fact the penny you melted was copper-plated-zinc, 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. Would you have weighed it on a fine scale you'd have noticed it weighed only 2.5g rather than 3.1g that a mostly copper penny weighs. I would suggest you do some research on the subject starting with www.usmint.gov so that you can be better informed when attempting to cast metals of potentially hazardous composition.

[thoraxe]

yeah that's what i meant it contained zinc. I cut a modern penny and half and saw zinc in the center of it, but when i cut a 74 penny it was difficult and i saw no silver metal in between. Same goes for the 84 penny, i coundn't cut it and i saw no silver metal, so i guessed it was pure copper all the way through

[khaeotixs]

tbh i don't know. Try it.