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Hello everyone. This is my first post on the forum, and had two questions about charcoal forge in genreal. I have completed 80% of my forge build so far and have decided on a clay/ ash mix for insulation. My first question is what minimun thickness of insulation should I apply at the bottom of my firepot? And the second, how deep of a fire pot would you recomend? also any recommendations on width/ size would also be helpful. Thank you, I love projects and am already having a blast, can't wait to start hammering some metal.

I'm making my new forge and I'm thinking of using insboard as a sacrificial floor on top of 2" thick inswool. The typical hard firebricks I find that I used for the floor of my last forge aren't long enough for this one. Would insboard make a good replaceable floor, should it be coated, or is this a bunk idea entirely? Thanks for any help you can give.

Hello friends, I am new around here and to the art of bladesmithing as well. So, as a first step I am designing and building my forge, which will also serve as a HT forge for the knives to be Basically I am going to weld together a box-like steel frame which will hold the fire-bricks in place. Along the center line a pipe with holes will serve as a tuyere. I have made a rough sketch of a section of the forge (the floor and one of the side walls): In the sketch you can see I am planning to use soft bricks as an insulation between the heat and the steel body, and hard bricks as the "mass" of the furnace which will hold heat. As far as I know the factory I'm buying from makes the soft brick at a thickness of 6.4CM (2.5 inch) and the hard type they have at 3,4 or 6.4 cm. So my question is whether that design is a good idea for a forge, or perhaps I'm better off using different materials (such as refractory cement, which I already have) to line the forge, if so what would be a recommended thickness of the lining? Thank you for your time! Guy P.S I am going to make this forge down scalable by building a move-able divider from fire bricks (inspired by whitlox forge) and some steel rod to go inside the tuyere. Will post pictures of it when the project is done.