Sage Blackthorn's

Mini-Forge     

The Project

This is my attempt to show how I made a miniature charcoal forge from an old empty helium tank bought from Smart & Final for filling helium balloons (no balloons were harmed during the course of this project).

The Process

It's really not that hard to create a primitive charcoal forge when you have access to a few tools, some scrap metal and a little time after work each day. First I simply went out and purchased 1.5" galvanized steel pipe, joints, and couplings from Home Depot. These cost me maybe $50 or $60:

• Floor flange
• T-Joint
• Plug
• Couplings
• Street Elbow
• 3 sections of 8 in. long threaded pipe

This is the Helium tank that was part of a Helium Balloon Kit from Smart&Final that will eventually become the forge. This didn't cost me anything since I got it from work

Here we see the Valve Stem, with the plastic pieces removed. The side of the valve stem removed. Finally the top view of the valve stem.

Place the floor flange over the valve stem and trace the inside with a fine point sharpie marker. Don't forget to mark the mounting holes for the bolts.

Drilling out the holes for the bolts is easy, a 1/4 in. diameter drill bit is all it takes. The larger hole for the air blower presents a bit more of a challenge...

As you can see, I began by drilling small holes around the inside perimeter of of the circle that marks the inside of the flange. I chose to continue using the 1/4 in. drill bit for the sake of speed, but a small drill bit would've produced a much cleaner edge. As it is, I wasn't worried about the rough edge so much as I wanted to get it done quickly!

Here is the removed valve stem.

As you can see in the first picture above, I have marked out the weld seam on the perimeter of the tank. After about 3 days of hack sawing on that line for 2 hours a night, I finally got the tank separated into two halves. That's when I noticed something very interesting.....

 ...the lower half of the tank had a sort of "lip" inside which the upper half was seated upon. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense to design it this way. Unfortunately for me, this meant I was sawing through twice as much steel as I need to!

The Assembly
Once the tank is sawn in half, it's a simple matter to bolt the flange to the tank and assemble the Blower Assembly by connecting the Flange to the T-Joint with a pipe coupling. Put the Plug in the bottom of the T-Joint and attach the sections of 8 in. long pipe to the side. This is to bring the Forge Blower far enough away from the Fire Pot (that's the half section of tank where the charcoal it burning) so that it doesn't get to hot.
First bolt the flange to the upper half of the tank that has the handles. When you turn it over, the handles will become legs for your forge.

Next, screw in the pipe coupling.

Screw the T-Joint onto the coupling

Attach the plug to T-Joint

This is the diagram that gave me the assembly instructions for the forge. It's from a great book from Reader's Digest called "Back To Basics: How To Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills". As you can see, this diagram is on page 351 of the most recent edition.

Once the T-Joint assembly is finished, I added a couple lengths of 8 in. pipe connects with 2 pipe couplings, a 90 degree street elbow and another piece of 8 in. pipe to bring the connection point for the blower a safe distance away.   

I think this modular design will be most flexible and allow me to use either a hair dryer, (As shown in Ron Hood's video "Woods Master Volume 9: Primitive Knifemaking"), a primitive "bag" bellows, or a more modern pump-bellows.

Here is the completed Mini-Forge. I noticed that the T-joint sticks out quite a ways below the "legs" of the Fire Pot. I've compensated for this by simply setting it up on a couple bricks from the back yard. I plan to further add to the forge by affixing a bit of metal heating duct to the end of the pipe to accept an inexpensive hair-dryer to act as a forge blower.

One Hacksaw from Home Depot: $24

One manuel hand drill from Riverside Lumber Co.: $8

1/4 In. countersunk bolts, 4: $4

Floor Flange and Bolts, you can see the Flange was cast to use the counter-sunk bolts.

One 14 in. "Husky" brand pipe wrench for putting the Blower Assembly together. Also from Home Depot.