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Hello all! My name is Eric, I live in Fort Smith Arkansas and have recently gotten into forging due to the inspiration of FIF. I've read posts from this great community in order to help me along my journey and I thought I would share my first dedicated propane forge build with you all. It started life as an air compressor laying in a scrap heap at a metal recycling center. By flexing my terrible welding skills it now has a new life. I'm very much in to upcycling and I can honestly say this is the coolest thing I've ever upcycled. I had to burn out a lot of oily water and god knows what else inside the compressor tank to get started but it was smooth sailing from there. I fabricated essentially everything off the cuff and I'm really pleased with the results. The overall finished build is a 20" H x 8" diameter chamber with two layers of kaowool, 2-3 layers of satanite (I had already applied before I read about rigidizer for the wool) and a final 2-3 layers of ITC100 (not shown as I am still slowly curing the satanite). I have two Frosty tee burners I built myself from frosty's design. 3/4" tee, 6" BIP nipples (using frosty's 8 x mixing chamber diameter formula) , and 3/4" x 1 1/4" reducer coupling. 0.30 mig tip tapped into all brass plumbing sealed with pipe dope. If anyone wants any really specific details of how I got to this point, please feel free to message me!

Started work on this 20lbs propane tank yesterday.

My take on the Frosty-T burner. IMG_2978.MOV

Since you guys helped me decide to fabricate a fire pot and table vs. pay a bunch of money I thought I would post some photos my process in building a new fire pot, table, chimney, and tuyere/clinker breaker. One of my goals was to make this entire build as collapsible as I could to make it easier to move in the future. I decided on a table measuring 48" x 24" based on my space requirements. Next step: Designing the fire pot. I spent a long time micro-adjusting measurement to try and get a design I was happy with. The result is 10" x 8", not quite 4" deep, 2.75" diameter hole. Cardboard first. 3/8" plate second. I really wanted to try a clinker breaker design similar to the ones in Angele firepots. I've been using the "spinny triangle" clinker breaker for years and although it works, I wanted to try something new. The issue in design, however, is that because the clinker breaker moves straight up and down, the rod attached to the ball must be directly underneath the hole where the ash dump usually is. So my design is to have an offset ash dump which meant some funky fabrication. The ball moves up and down. The theory is that the ball pushes clinker up a bit to allow air flow into the coal and at the same time crushing smaller bits between the ball and the walls of the hole. We'll see what actually happens. Meanwhile... figuring out the correct location for the pivot holes underneath took some trial and error, but it works pretty smooth now. The railroad piece acts as the weight to pull the ash dump back. up I figured while i was at it I might clean up my hand crank blower that will be attached to this forge. Here are some glamour shots post cleaning, oiling, and painting the legs. There is some really beautiful gearing in there. Finally, I really want to try the Hofi style side draft as seen here: https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/23197-bp1048-side-draft-chimney/ It's 4' long, made from 1/8" sheet, and measures 12"x12". The vertical round pipe will be 10" diameter because I have a bunch of it lying around and that stuff is expensive. So we'll see if I wish I had gone larger. After a high-temp paint job along with some stove-black here's the whole set as it stands now: Thanks for looking. Critique and comments welcome of course.

Hi there. I was tempted to put this in WIP but decided it should live here . I am building my first forge and, after having considered cannibalising my barbecue and other things, finally decided to scratch build. Any comments are greatly appreciated but please forgive my welds as I have no real experience (before yesterday that is). I decided to make the forge 1m wide, 50cm across and about 95cm high using a frame of 4mm thick 40mm equal angle mild steel and a table of 4mm sheet. The table slots into the frame so that I can replace it if I need to. The fire bowl is 12cm (5") deep cast iron pot from eBay. First I cut the sections for the top frame and welded them together School boy error though, I welded the inside as well. Can't seem to get these ground down so I decided to use that frame as my support. I welded a second frame, this time leaving the inside alone Next I cut the four legs. I welded the 45' off cuts I had laying around onto the bottoms to give a bit more surface area to the feet. Sorry I thought I took a photo of the welded feet but can't seem to find it. Next I lay two legs parallel with the table frame on the end at 90' to the legs. These were then tack welded to hold in place an d further welded after rechecking. The odd looking thing in there is a welders magnet end-on. Once this was done, I placed the second frame 24" down from the top one and facing the other way. Again a lot of measuring, tacking, some choice words and finally welding. Voila. All I had to do now was slot in the table sheet, position the pot, mark and grind. You can just about see the feet weld on the far side. Sinking the pot enough took ages and the lowest I could get it to go is the handle thickness. Today I plan to get some bolts to hold it to the table (via the handles) and work on the blower assembly I have a 480w bouncy castle blower (again eBay) and some free 5cm stainless steel tubing. I also plan to (eventually) put a side draft chimney on as well as raise the 'right' to stop my coal falling off I have also yet to cut the grooves for working with larger pieces. Unfortunately, this being England, it is now raining quite a bit and this may not progress until next time I'm now working on a dry day

It is finally time to build myself a new forge! I have been planning to do this for about 9 years now and was never able to get around to it or have a place I could really work on building a new forge. But now I am all set up in a very small shed that is adequate to do this project as well as more blades once the forge is built. My current forge is an old furriers forge and is very good at oxidizing steel. There are two burners and only one of them has a way to regulate the flow of air. My main problem with this forge and the reason I am building a new one is that it is very hard to get this forge up to welding heat. The fire box is so large it takes around 15 to 20 psi and about 20 minutes to get it almost to welding heat. Here is a pic. I have found a great source for a good size steel tank to build the forge out of. This will be a two burner propane forge. The body I found is a brand new Husky portable compressor tank and cost me a wopping $35. I ended up getting some punches to push the order over $40 for free shipping from home depot.com. So far I have cut one end of the tank off with my oxy acetylene torch and cut the stock ports in the front and back of the tank. I wanted to make sure that the forge is large enough to make very large knives as well as swords as my skill permits. I will be putting a kind of plug inside the forge to shorten the fire box so I can use only one burner for smaller blades and this will make the forge even more efficient. Here is my progress so far. Torch cut the end of the tank off Then torched out the ports I fabricated a latch from some bar stock Then welded a hinge and the latch to make the cut off end into a door. The gap between the door and the body is intentional. I will explain why latter on. At this point you all might be wondering where the Dragon Head part of my title comes in. I am going to work that up in a 3D rendering program tonight and I will add that image to this topic as soon as I can. I will be adding more updates as I do more work on the forge. I am waiting for all of my insulation supplies to arrive here in the next couple days! I would appreciate any comments and suggestions that you fine gentlemen may have. I am doing this WIP so that others may fined some helpful ideas in building their own propane forge. I also want to learn from any of you if I should do something different or cold do something better.