Cheap Online Forges

[NickD]

I am interested in getting into bladesmithing, but am still in the collecting of basic materials to get started phase. I found a couple of double burner propane forges online and wanted to know what everyone’s thoughts on them are. I am looking at the Mr Volcano Hero 2 and the Febtech forge. I want a double burner because I feel like it’ll last longer before I outgrow it. The Febtech is 20” whereas the Hero 2 is 16” for basically the same price. There are a lot more reviews on the Hero 2, but not a lot from the Febtech. Does anyone have any opinions about either one?

[Jerrod Miller]

I had the same thoughts when I built my first forge.  Boy was I dumb.  Smaller is much better to begin with.  You will never outgrow a small forge, though you may also need a larger one.  

[Joshua States]

Jerrod has the truth here. Ask yourself a question: What do you see yourself making in this forge as you learn?

The truth is you will probably start off as many of us did, making blades between 4-8 inches long. Quite frankly a 16" deep forge is way more than you need for this. My big forge is only 16 inches deep and the only reasons I have a forge that big is for working big hunks of steel into long bars. For regular forging, I use my wife's primary forge which is the NC tools whisper Daddy. You only need to heat up a small section of the blade at a time to forge it to shape. There's really no benefit, and some detriment, to heating up areas of the steel that you won't be hammering on.

In general, a smaller forge will use less fuel, concentrate the heat where you want it, and help you forge easier and learn faster.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Joshua States

[Doug Lester]

Joshua, you must have a match made in heaven if you are using your wife's primary forge.

 

Doug

[Alan Longmire]

Of the cheap eBay forges I've seen in operation, the single-burner Mr. Volcano is the only one I'd recommend.  You won't be making mosaic damascus in it, but it'll do fine for general forging.  My primary forge is coal burning, but I use a tiny little two-brick gas forge (chamber size about 2.5" x 8") for everything from forging blades up to 42 inches x 1.5 inches, straightening sword blades, heat-treating blades up to 8 inches (not including the tang), making hooks, nails, and other things that don't need a big fire.

 

If you get the Mr. Volcano, don't use the bricks for the floor.  That makes a heat sink. Use them as doors, and line the floor with refractory cement.

[Joshua States]

6 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

the single-burner Mr. Volcano

This actually looks like a pretty good deal.

https://www.amazon.com/Volcano-Hero-Stainless-Professionals-Blacksmith/dp/B091SFMK9C/ref=asc_df_B091SFMK9C/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=507696663523&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10140955940773099120&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9029978&hvtargid=pla-1264660209501&psc=1

 

[Alan Longmire]

It is.  The burner alone should be worth that.  I wouldn't have thought much about them except one of my guild members bought one to use for demos.  He was so impressed he brought it to a meeting and we all played with it.  The pentagonal shape allows a swirl effect, the burner is very nice quality and very adjustable, and it's stainless.  Beats those from Devil Forge three ways from Sunday, and is cheaper to boot.  If you use some bricks to make semi-doors (new folk: you have to leave at least a third of the door space open or this type of burner will not work) you can even weld in one, as long as it's a short billet. 

 

I am not a paid spokesperson, either, but I am open to that... 

[Matt Walker]

Just ordered the 2 burner model. 

[NickD]

I think the two burner is what I got from everyone’s discussion. I can just use one if I’m doing something small, but sounds like it’ll be plenty of room for larger growth. 

[Jerrod Miller]

14 hours ago, NickD said:

I think the two burner is what I got from everyone’s discussion.

Considering everyone said to stick with the single burner, I would say you missed out some of the discussion.  

 

14 hours ago, NickD said:

I can just use one if I’m doing something small

This tends to not work as well as one would like/think.  That was my reasoning to building a double burner for my first forge.  One of the many mistakes I have made in forging.  

[Matt Walker]

Mine arrived today. First impression is the burners look very nice and well built. I see the regulator, hose and burners easily justifying the price. Will need to keep an eye on the barb fittings and hose clamps or come up with safer connections. What I'm not crazy about is the placement of the burner sockets. When I get ready to build it the burners will likely end up a little higher and aimed tangent to the other top panel. With the top side junction made more rounded with refractory material and a Mizzou floor.

[Matt Walker]

Got to work on the Mr Volcano today. Here is what it looks like right now. And a 4 second drying burn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehm_UC3kb3M It may need some fine adjustment after drying our and final smooth coat of satanite. 

[Matt Walker]

After a little refinement and adjusting https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gjkoVVOeeg  It'll get an air curtain and work rest where it ends up.

 

 

[Sema Bianchi]

I am thinking of getting a Volcano also for my first gas forge.

 

I used to run a coke forge and after seeing the price of the Volcano I'm tempted to buy one.

 

The reviews look great for it..how is your Volcano treating you so far Matt, have you done much forging with it?

 

 

[Sean Blum]

I actually ended up getting one to replace our small forge we have for members to use. Only change I made to it was I coated with some leftover Kast-o-lite instead of the satanite it came with just so I'm doing less patching (members are rough on it). I have personally made items from small hooks up to a new hammer and it works really well. It has a hot spot still like most venturi burners but its not as noticeable as our first venturi forge. Like mentioned above I would get a different regulator but I have to play safe because of our members so up to you.

[Sema Bianchi]

Hi Sean thanks for the reply.

 

Oh wow I'm surprised it has a hot spot, do you use bricks to partially seal the front and rear openings to keep more heat in?

 

Good to hear about the regulator thanks. :)

[Alan Longmire]

All venturi forges have a hot spot, which is why Matt modified his to get more of a swirling flame.  Do use the bricks to partially close the ends, but you have to leave them about half open for this kind of burner to work properly. 

[Sean Blum]

Yep just as Alan said though i didnt take the time to coat it like Matt I just needed it for durability so you can get degree of hot spot but not eliminate. I will say I like how fast it comes to temp when I remember our old 3 burner Majestic and our large ribbon. Overall for its price I would recommend.

[Matt Walker]

16 hours ago, Sema Bianchi said:

Matt, have you done much forging with it?

Actually I haven't. Been busy removing the coal forge this unit will be going back in the same space. I have run it some for shop heat and I'm very pleased with the uniformity of the heat in the chamber. Removing the coal forge turned into a job involving building scaffold and enlisting help removing the smokestack from a 14 foot celling, thanks Warren. I'm confident the modification will prove worthwhile. I also have this big castable forge for damascus https://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?/topic/42172-milk-can-forge/#comment-421277 The Volcano unit will be for various smaller fast heat up work.

[Sema Bianchi]

2 hours ago, Sean Blum said:

Yep just as Alan said though i didnt take the time to coat it like Matt I just needed it for durability so you can get degree of hot spot but not eliminate. I will say I like how fast it comes to temp when I remember our old 3 burner Majestic and our large ribbon. Overall for its price I would recommend.

i noticed they used the Majestic Forges for Forged In Fire, was your old Majestic the same as those 3-burner models?

Being a timed competition they must have heated up the steel pretty quickly.

 

Thanks for letting me know Alan, still wrapping my head around propane forges.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Sema Bianchi

[Sema Bianchi]

I just discovered this 3 burner propane forge, almost pulled the trigger on a Mr Volcano until i saw one from a company called VEVOR.

 

Only thing turning me off is it's from China, where Mr.Volcano is made in the good old USA..the VEVOR is much cheaper but wanted to ask what everyone here thinks of the design?

 

[Alan Longmire]

Stay away from those, and anything that looks like them.

[Geoff Keyes]

I have worked on a Majestic and I have to say I hated it.  It was difficult to control at low heats (1400-1700).  It pretty much had one speed, Way Too Hot.  I should say that these were the forges on the Forged in Fire set.  They were used and abused ( the floors were a sticky mass of flux and slag) and we were warned not to mess with them too much (if they went out, we were not allowed to relight due to fire regs).  My home built fan driven vertical forge works much better for me.

 

Geoff

[Alan Longmire]

7 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Stay away from those, and anything that looks like them.

 

Allow me to clarify, I wrote that before coffee and work:

 

Most of these cheap forges are very bad design.  This one takes it to the extremes.  Not enough interior volume means uneven heat and a highly oxidizing atmosphere.  Adding more burners in an attempt to even out the heat means even more oxidizing.  The designer just looking to make money of off Forged in Fire and not actually studying forge design means you're getting ripped off from the beginning.

 

Good forges are designed to heat via radiant heat from the lining, not direct blast from the burner(s). This is the fundamental problem with ALL of these cheap forges with burners of widely variable quality entering at top dead center.  For a very few applications where you don't care about decarburization, material loss to scale, or can mitigate these effect by very fast heats, this can work.  The only two examples I can think of where this isn't a problem are bending horseshoes and spot-heating when making armour. 

 

That's where this design came from, travelling farriers who needed a lightweight, fast-heating forge so they can bend and fit shoes from barstock in the field.  This does not in any way translate to bladesmithing, where our main concern is a neutral to reducing atmosphere and minimal oxide scale.  

 

The second fallacy is more burners = better/hotter forge, especially for knife work.  We've covered it here a lot, but it always bears repeating: At only one time while making a knife do you want the whole thing at heat, and that's during heat treatment. You can only forge about a hand's-breadth of steel per heat. Any heating you do beyond that is wasted fuel, grain growth, and decarburization.  Even when forging swords, you do so a hand's-breadth at a time.  Even with solid fuel forges, for all of history the ones made for actual forging as opposed to heat treating are managed to have a hot zone of no larger than could be forged in one heat.  Admittedly, the factory forges where they made anvils were a lot bigger so they could get anvil-sized blocks of iron and steel to uniform welding heat, but the average bladesmith/cutler's forge only heats enough steel to hammer by hand in one heat.  

 

The other part of that observation is that people seem to think they can just turn off one or more burners of a multi-burner forge to get shorter heats.  On these cheap ones that doesn't work, again because the chamber is too small for efficient radiant heat transfer.  

 

All this is why, back in the day (by which I mean the revival of the hand-forged blade in the USA from the later 1970s into the late 1990s) Don Fogg, among others, developed the vertical blown forge.  The only commercially available forges at the time were coal forges or Mankel-type open-sided gas forges designed for farriers.  NC tool used the basic farrier design and made it better by enclosing it more, and using more ceramic fiber than castable refractory for lighter weight with shorter heat-up times.  Big industrial forges like Johnsons were all-brick behemoths that used blown burners and wasted most of the heat you put in them.  What Don and the other did was take the blown burner idea and combine it with the lightweight shell that NC Tool used, modifying the interior to be round and for the flame to enter at a tangent to the lining rather than like a blowtorch in a bottle.  This swirling flame resulted in a far more even heat with far less oxidation.  By then standing the cylindrical shell on end with the burner entering near the bottom, you get a truly even, reducing atmosphere perfect for welding or forging blades. For whatever reason, even today the only way to get a forge like this is to make it yourself.  The better commercial gas forges like Chile Forge, Diamondback, Majestic, and so on do sometimes use an angled burner entry that moves the hot spot to the wall rather than the center of the floor, but no commercial forge I know of uses true tangential burner entry and none use the vertical design.  

 

This is why I like the Mr. Volcano in the cheap forge category.  It has an angled burner so you can still use the hot spot if you want (and it can be handy sometimes), and it has a large enough interior volume to allow good radiant heat transfer.  You do need to use the bricks as partial doors, but that's not hard.  The burner is the best part of these, though.  Some cheap forge burners like the Vevor and especially the Devil Forge, can't be adjusted enough to offer anything but a highly oxidizing flame.  The Mr. Volcano is close to a T-Rex Hybrid Burner in the level of adjustability, and it has a properly tapered burner flare unlike any of the other cheap units.

 

All of that said, in my own shop I mostly forge in coal, because it what I learned on and because for axes and tomahawks it's easier to fit awkward and large shapes into the heat compared to a typical gas forge.  When I do use gas, it's a very small forge made from a pair of hollowed-out soft firebricks with a venturi burner of the type sold at www.hightemptools.com.  I have forged a sword with that little thing and its 10-cm hot spot. It is capable of welding heat, but is limited to small billets less than 2.5 cm square and 8 to 10 cm long.  

[Sema Bianchi]

Hi Alan i greatly appreciate your reply thank you.

You have given me a much better understanding of gas forges and it has really opened my eyes now.

 

I will put the Volcano top of my list now that's for sure and nothing is below it except for maybe trying to build my own from firebricks.

 

I mean if you managed to forge a sword from a firebrick forge with a venturi burner is goes to show less can be more.

 

Alan in regards to your firebrick forge...is your burner at an angle or is it pushing the heat in directly from the side?