NEMESIS (My enclosed Brake-Drum Forge)

Avadon · Post by **Avadon** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:43 am

So I finally finished my forge I had been picking everyones brain about forever and ever. This is basically an enclosed brake drum forge. I live in a rural area, but it's still burbs, so I had a feeling if I really have just a big open fire going that someone at some point might come over and complain. This way it looks just like one big mean bbq of evil. lol

I decided to namer her "Nemesis" after the remorseless Goddess of divine retribution.

Sometime this week I hope to light her up and test it all out.
I'll also show you the pics soon of my anvil i use outside.. it's just a giant steel brick.. hehe.. cheap, but effective. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine to have tools all over the grass as a company mows our lawn and they don't do it very regularly so if I lay things on the lawn they will get lost, thus I made sure to weld a lot of stuff on the forge to hang quenching buckets, hammer racks, tool racks, a grill pad on the right to place hot steel, and a hammer rack bottom left. The rubber mount near the hammer rack is where I push my hair dryer into it. All in all it's one very stout design. I welded much better wheels on the thing. It's quite heavy, i'd say easy 200+#'s I'm sure in using it i'll learn enough of what works and what doesn't. I'm sure this will just be one of several coal forges i'll build in my life, but this isn't bad for a mobile forge (as i'll move from here eventually) and it's also my first forge.

(believe me when I say I narrowed it down to a fraction of the pics I took, so i'm hoping these load okay for everyone. If it hangs you may have to refresh, but they are all small size)

Adonfff · Post by **Adonfff** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:54 am

Wow..
This is pure beauty

Fantastic work...

Love the"weld writing"

Sasha · Post by **Sasha** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:55 am

Thye very coolest thing about that for me, and there are many coolnesses to choose from, is that you could get some thick unglazed terracota pavers (NOT CONCRETE!) and have them standing by for when you want to fire the thing up with charcoal, get the tiles stood up vertically or lay them at a 45degree angle and then use the thing as a tandoor oven/grill. It will eaily get hot enough. The cooking optins with what you have just built are wonderful...the metal bending side of it is nice too, though I think you have built yourself a huge clinker-extraction nightmare...But I hope I am wrong and saoking your coal will certainly help too.

Sasha

Avadon · Post by **Avadon** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:13 am

Sasha wrote:Thye very coolest thing about that for me, and there are many coolnesses to choose from, is that you could get some thick unglazed terracota pavers (NOT CONCRETE!) and have them standing by for when you want to fire the thing up with charcoal, get the tiles stood up vertically or lay them at a 45degree angle and then use the thing as a tandoor oven/grill. It will eaily get hot enough. The cooking optins with what you have just built are wonderful...the metal bending side of it is nice too, though I think you have built yourself a huge clinker-extraction nightmare...But I hope I am wrong and saoking your coal will certainly help too.

Sasha

Well my family wants to use it as a grill.. and I keep telling them that the toxicity of all the metals and coal and flux would probably make food chokingly poisonous. I don't know if that's true, but I really don't want anyone welding marshmellows over my blades haha.

I'm sure that the grill/tuyere setup will need some critiquing. I don't know if it's deep enough, if it will be easy enough to push stock into(aka open enough) and clinker will be easy enough to remove. The grill has two hooks so I can actually lift out the grill easy, and the tuyere plate underneathe looks like this below and it also lifts out with the little tab ring i welded on it.

Hopefully i've not created, as you suggest, a giant clinker maker lol If so then i'll have to find a way to sell clinker.

Sasha · Post by **Sasha** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:35 am

Don't joke about it. The cuttler I apprenticed with had his shop at a tourist stop because they gave him free workshop space, power and coal just to have him on "display". Using queensland brown coal meant we got clinkers like champion potatoes even with a side draft forge that was supposed to prevent them.
Now the thing is cvlinkers are mostly silica and suspended carbon solids....

Every now and then he would get mischivous towards the glass blower at the centre (who was purely selling to the tourists) and owuld create "clinker art" for the tourists. Haul out a glowing clinker and use a steel rod to draw out tendrils and work them into baskets and swans and stuff. The tousists frequesntly tried offering to buy them. A couple of times he gave up on explaining how unstable the material was (and thus prone to shattering in thermal differences like can be found by being put ona windowsill) and just givre in and sell them.

Not one tour bus critter ever bought a $700 pattern welded blade...but he could have thrown a bucket of sand into the forge and still not have kept up with demand for "clinker art"

(You can flatten the "base" of a globular clinker, quench it in old transmission oil and then polish it up on the buffer into an extremely attractive and unique conversation peice/paperweight....No really. Call it $20?)

Sasha
...Every now and then I look back and realise that most of the influencial figures in my life were an utter rogue's gallery.

Avadon · Post by **Avadon** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:47 am

LOL @ "tour bus critters"

I feel that same way since i live in a very touristy vacation area. All summer the tourists are here and come late sept they all leave (thankfully). It's like, thanks for your money, and making the traffic nightmarish, now get out. lol