Brake drum forge question.

Mad Matt · Post by **Mad Matt** » Wed Feb 27, 2002 3:00 pm

Ok well I've got a brake drum and stuff for making myself a forge. All I need now is to make a tyure (SP?) and get the pluming stuff.

I went to home depot last week thinking I'd get the plumbing stuff. I had in my head that I needed 2" pipe and fittings. Well the biggest they had available was 1-1/4".

Now I just went over to Krag's page because I'm REALLY bored at work. Took a look at his forge page (I even used that forge) and noticed he says he used 1-1/4" pipe. Since I'm generally an idiot I figgured I might as well ask about the pluming stuff before I go buy it. Is the 1-1/4" stuff gonna work ok? If I need 2" I can get it from one of the hvac subs that do work for us but it's a lot more hassle then just poping over to home depot and picking the stuff up.

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The budding mid 14th century German Transitional guy.
Mad Matt's Armory

Thaddeus · Post by **Thaddeus** » Wed Feb 27, 2002 4:23 pm

I would think that inch and a quarter would be ok, the forge I used at the Mystic Seaport museum had an original bellows setup and I believe the pipe coming from that was not much more than an inch. Its been a while so the memory is a little murky. But I believe you will just need higher velocity moving through the tyure to get a like volume of air. I will ok in my books when I get home. They seem to frown on coal dust in the server room here for some reason.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 27, 2002 9:43 pm

Narrow, but useable. As Thaddeus suggests, you may have to crank harder. Also make sure that whatever grill you put in the bottom to keep the coal from falling in and blocking the pipe has a very high "air-to-metal" ratio.

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Krag · Post by **Krag** » Thu Feb 28, 2002 1:57 pm

I use a three speed hair dryer which works fine. In fact, anything other than the lowest setting is too much air. I've never hooked up my crank blower, but I seriously doubt yuo would notice having to crank harder to force air through a 1-1/4 vs. a 2" pipe. If you have enough volume flow that you notice the size difference, your coal would be levitating above your forge.
The thing I do notice, is that my pipe where the ashes fall tends to clog up easier. Were I to do it over, I would use a larger pipe on this section. The only reason I used 1-1/4 was beacuase I already had it laying around. The forge on my site was made from scroungeable materials.

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Krag von Berghen
KragAxe Armoury

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