Not much time …

I didn’t get as much spare time this weekend as I would have liked to. Still, I got some of the shaping done of the hood of the forge.

I started with a circle of steel and cut a chord out with the section length equal to the circumference of the forge body.

Next, I started shaping the cone from the chord. I was going to make a simple tool to bend the steel, but in the end, I didn’t have time to fart around with such a short lived tool. Instead, I used an old hardwood pallet and belted the steel along some radial lines that I marked on the steel.

This meant that I had a number of segments with sharpish lines.

Then I went around the partially bent piece and started rounding out the cone. There was a lot of stress in the steel at the point, so it took a lot of correcting the edge.

I drilled six holes in the steel (three holes per side) and used fencing wire to hold the edges together, twisting the wire to cinch the edges closer together.

The cone is still quite flat (more of an oval at the base rather than a circle), so I still need to bash it some more to get it even and … useful.

When I have the edges matching properly, I will weld the edges together.

To get the hood working properly as a cone, I will need to heat it and then do some more bashing. The heat will be used to relieve some of the pressure in the steel as it is only bent, rather than shaped with heat.

The point of the cone will be cut off and joined to the flue. The cone will also be used to make the cap for the flue.

When this is done, I will be drilling and bolting the hood onto the top of the forge body. The bent over top of the forge will be bent back to match the angle of the hood.