[TheForge] Re: Brake Drum forge

[Mike Spencer]

Weeks ago, PF wrote:

> I saw a guy make a forge out of cardboard! He lined it with clay mud
> mixed with ashes. Worked surprisingly well. Just control the excess
> water you use managing the fire.

It was, I gather, not uncommon in Nova Scotia, to make forges out of
wood.  A guy who apprenticed here and then went to work in Tony
Millham's shop created a stir there when he built his own wooden forge
along the lines he'd seen here.

I've only ever seen one of these, one I dismantled in a shop I
bought. It was all wood, clay and ashes except for a cast iron affair
about the size of a small throw cushion which served as a tuyere,
throttle and clinker breaker.  It had been in use by a full-time smith
for decades.

One of these times I'll find and digitize the pics of the forge I
built when I was doing a couple of weeks of dune restoration on Sable
Island.  Made entirely from stuff salvaged from the government weather
station dump -- aluminum electric kettle, ceramic RF tuner insulator,
copper wire and yes, an actual, proper crank forge blower balled solid
with rust and sand.  Fuel was (1) dried horse buns, plentifully
available and then (2) coal, pried from the foundations of the
collapsed, 19th c. life-saving station where it had been used as
coarse aggregate in the concrete. (The buns worked but the coal have a
better heat. :-)


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^