Tested my new coal forge against my old brake drum setup on 12 knife blanks

I finally got tired of fighting my brake drum forge, so I built a simple side blast coal forge from a 55 gallon drum and some fire bricks. Ran both side by side on Saturday with 12 blanks of 1084 steel, and the new one hit welding heat in about 4 minutes while the old one took almost 9. The even heat across the whole billet was the real game changer, no more chasing hot spots or flipping constantly to keep things uniform. My first two san mai billets actually welded clean on the first try with the new setup. Anyone else made the jump from a brake drum to a proper coal forge, and did you notice that much difference in your weld success rate?

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nelson.wren13d ago

Built mine from a 30 gallon barrel and my weld success went from 50/50 to almost every time.

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