[TheForge] Johnson Forge-Ralph's forge

[John Newman]

Take a look at Ralph Sproul's gas forge on the photo access site it has the
best of both worlds.  I saw his at his shop when I visited him  about a
month ago.  I got the plans from him and plan to build it in a few months
after I get settled into my new shop.
Starting the move into the new shop this weekend.  Hopefully I can get the
shop painted, wired, partly insulated,  and a toilet put in, this weekend.
Then I can start moving in my patternmaking  machinery next week.  The
following weekend I can move the blacksmith shop.  Its going to be a busy
few months.

John


Ries Niemi wrote:

> i used a johnson forge for years, because it was all I had. I got it
> from an insurance salesman in Beverly Hills along with a calking vise,
> 5 pairs of tongs, and a few hundred pounds of steel, for 65 bucks,
> coincidentally. He had been a farrier in a former life, and one day got
> kicked hard by a horse in his hammer arm. Went to the chiropractor for
> a year or so, didnt get better, so he went to the orthopedic surgeon,
> who told him "we could have fixed this if we operated a year ago, but
> its fused now, so youre stuck this way for life". So he became an
> insurance salesman. After almost 10 years, he finally decided to get
> rid of some of the blacksmithing stuff that was cluttering up his
> garage, keeping him from getting the mercedes 450sl convertible in.
>
> Anyway, its true- the johnson forge does scale things up pretty quick.
> It also takes a little while to get hot, but boy howdy does it get hot.
> Holds a lot of stuff, and with the swing away lid, it will hold all
> kinds of wierd sized stuff. Can you put a 16" circle of 1/8" plate in
> your forge? 2 heats, but even still, they have their place. Nowadays I
> have the Urban Assault Forge, which is a nifty little atmospheric
> designed by Phillip Baldwin, and I havent fired up the old johnson in
> years. But I had a few jobs where it was perfect- like when I needed to
> forge a tapered point on a couple hundred pieces of rebar for fence
> pickets for a nasty looking anti personnel fence in a bad neighborhood
> of LA.
>
> James Viste, of Detroit, who demoed at LaCrosse, has a homebuilt
> clamshell, with, I think, a foot pedal operated top. He does a lot of
> forgewelding of surface decoration in it, mostly plate, so he likes the
> big surface area of a johnson style, and he often surface forge welds
> little bitty ball bearings to plate or bar. So when you take em out of
> the forge, right before you weld em, you need to be extra careful not
> to knock em off the base plate- so he really likes the extra large
> opening of a clamshell. I think the clamshell takes care of some of the
> design problems of an open top forge.
>
> But for 65 bucks, or even 165, the johnson forge would make a good
> second forge for oddball problems.
>
> ries
>
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