[TheForge] Chip Forge (Round 2?) (was: Forge Design)

Sat Apr 11 12:39:27 EDT 2015

The burner i saw on John Fick’s forge was a cast oversized brick with lots of small perforations on top, and the air inlet underneath…Been many years and the memory is a little fuzzy..
Very even heat and impressively little oxidation on yellowhot work left in the forge for a long period.

On Apr 11, 2015, at 4:02 AM, Bruce . <freemab222 at gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, that's what I'm remembering.  I guess I was under the impression that
the chip forge was an established reality (in Europe) and let it go at that.

It seems to me that if the "chips" were the size of marbles (~9/16" dia.)
there wouldn't be much backpressure -- there's lots of space around spheres
that size.  Of course, real, random chips WOULD pack together and create
backpressure, a good reason to use spheroids.

Next, it seems to me that you wouldn't need a sophisticated burner for a
chip forge because you could design it such that, once the fire was lit,the
burn occurred near the base of the pile of chips itself.  (The chips would
have to be hot to allow this, as cold chips would suck way the heat of the
flame and extinguish it.)

So the issue is to come up with appropriate chips.  I wonder whether (hard,
firm) coke would do.  If there's no excess air, it wouldn't burn, and
carbon is an excellent refractory.

Bruce
NJ

On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 8:18 PM, jerry Frost <akfrosty at mtaonline.net> wrote:

> Yes, it's called a chip bed forge and is pretty much what you'll find in
> Europe for a gas forge. It seems to be designed to mimic a coke forge and
> is
> pretty limited to the designed fire size. They come in different models and
> sizes though. Ron Reil and I were noodling around with getting one to work
> with a NA burner. Ron thought he had a workable idea but I don't know what
> became of it. He was bound and determined to get his linear burners refined
> to a high art and I was plenty happy with how my T designed ejector worked
> so we just sort of stopped brainstorming burners and forges.
> 
> My intuition says a chip bed forge really needs a gun (blown) burner to
> overcome the back pressure of pushing the air/fuel through the chips. The
> mix needs to burn in the chips to work and I just never spent any time but
> thinking and sketching ideas. Never experimented let alone prototyped one.
> 
> Jer
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
> Bruce
> .
> Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 3:31 PM
> To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Forge Design.
> 
> wasn't there a thread YEARS ago about a gas forge that heated a pile of
> ceramic pellets, simulating a bed of coal.  It sounded interesting, but
> I've
> never tried it myself.
> 
> Bruce
> NJ
> 
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 11:01 AM, CGRAF <adveniam at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> Most of us have used , or are using, Coal and gas fired forges.
>> I am frustrated by the limitations of each.
>> 
>> The coal has the whole irritating the neighbors with the odor issue.
>> 
>> The gas forges have problems putting the heat exactly where I want it
>> heating up to large an area or limiting the forms I can make and still
>> insert the piece into the forge.
>> 
>> I have been playing with forges built to purpose out of just a loose
>> pile of firebrick. This allows me to modify fire shape and area pretty
>> much on the fly. It is a bit more trouble than changing the shape,
>> size and intensity of a coal fire but not much more.
>> 
>> Anybody else out there have any thing that you have tried to address
>> these or other issues with differing fuels and forge designs?
>> 
>> 
>> Mike Graf
>> 
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