More work on the Forge

So the plan for today was to fix the gap in the hood and to put the flue on the forge.

I started to cut a hole in the roof of the lean-to for the flue to go through, but all of the water on the roof from the dew came sluicing down on me … so I’ll leave that for later on (when the dew has finally evaporated off).

I cut the steel from the piece I cut out of the body to make some patches for the hood and fixed it on. It’s none too pretty … but then I don’t suppose that a forge is intended to be aesthetically pleasing … is it?

The hood will now direct smoke and ash upwards without getting in my face. Yay!

Like I said … it’s none too pretty. But I can always “hide” some of this mess with some pot-black, it will be less obvious if it is of a uniform colour. Also, the pot-black will help to reduce the amount of rusting that will affect the hood. Heat will make the rust flake off, but it’s better to have no rust in the first place.

You can see where the hole is going in the roof for the flue to go through.

Fitting the flue will be an exercise in expanding the bottom of the flue to go over the top of the hood, and then screwing it in place.

I got up on the roof of the lean-to and cut the hole through for the flue, then dropped the flue down and over the opening at the top of the hood. Fired it up and voila … chimney.

Still a lot of smoke coming out of the forge, but then I was burning straw. I need to cut the bottom of the flue into tabs, spread the tabs and screw them on to the top of the hood to make it nice and secure. That should also help with the smoke … a little bit. A good fire, when it is burning a better fuel will not smoke as much as this, so I am pretty happy with the outcome.

Now the flue has been attached to the hood and I’ve fired it up.

I’m burning a bit of straw and some old fruitwood cuttings. When the straw burned off and the wood was burning well, the flue drew most of the smoke as planned, so it was working.

With the air pumping into the forge from the old vacuum cleaner through the tuyere, I was getting a reasonably fierce burn in the middle of the forge. Of course, the fuel was used up pretty quickly as there wasn’t much of it, so it only burned for about 10 minutes. With some decent fuel in the forge, it should get quite a good heat going. I may need to put a grate over the top of the tuyere so that the burning coals don’t just drop through to the floor. I need to keep some coals banked to keep the heat going and so that I can get a good burn happening.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. There may be some tinkering required as I increase the heat, but the forge is now ready to go into service.