Hey Luke here at the outdoor boys YouTube channel and this is my forging setup and I've done a lot of projects and videos with this Forge I built an african spear japanese pocket knife couple axes so i get a lot of questions from people who are interested in having something similar so if you want a really cheap forge setup this is the.

Video for you I'm going to show you exactly how to do it so this is an old video I posted on my other YouTube channel the catfish and carp YouTube channel so I reacted it and just cleaned it up a little bit added a little bit of extra footage and here you go here's how to build a fort on a budget all right so let me give you kind of a.

Rundown of what I'm gonna be building let me show you the design now this furnace is a wood-burning furnace it runs off of charcoal or wood scraps you can also use coal if you want and it is powered by a shop vac so the shop vac is blowing air into the furnace you can also use a hairdryer you could use a hand.

Blower specialty blacksmithing blowers but this is what I had around the house and it works really good let me give you a little example here now I'm using lumber scraps in wood but if you use coal I hear that it gets even hotter and it works a little bit better you don't have to stoke it as often and it burns a little bit hotter so if you.

Can source coal and use that instead that's a great option the great thing about these wood-burning forges is you can use just about anything to make them I use sheet steel here but you know I could have used this helium canister cut it in two and use it you can use the a BBQ shell you can you could use a metal trash can probably I mean in just about.

Anything will work if you insulate it well enough the thing is is that sand is a fabulous insulator and so as long as you have a good layer of sand on top of the steel and the fires high up you shouldn't have any problem there is almost zero heat being transferred down so as long as the fire rides high up on the furnace the metal doesn't get heated.

Up this is cold okay everything but the very rim of the metal is cold to the touch and then you basically have some sort of base to put it on and I've got a frame made out of two by fours and I've got a little work area here with a vise okay so the first step in my Forge project is I'm going to put holes in this pipe now this is a.

Two-inch heavy gauge black steel pipe there you go six holes well I may be the worst welder ever and this may be the worst welding machine ever but we actually did it I think this will actually hold up oh it's so on yeah I don't even want to show you your close-up I'll tell you what that test run works.

Pretty good it fired right up and a lot of air going through there even with the sand covering up the vents it's cold down here where the sand is any part that's covered with sand is good you know it's a little lopsided so this part is exposed there was no sand and I can see where it's warped and bent a little bit I don't think it's causing any.

Permanent damage to it but I think what I need to do is once it cools down I need to level it out and make sure that the metals not not exposed that all the metals covered with sand and I think we're ready to go now I just need to mount my anvil and we'll go from there I think this might do the trick well it's a bit low and it's uneven on.

One end so you'd have to term it he's worried about there I don't know if I made it better or worse half a bubble off one okay for fuel I'm using charcoal and I've got charcoal that's just leftover from my fireplace and from forging the night before and you can buy or make charcoal comes in.

These chunks but you want it big chunky stuff we want hardwood charcoal or you can get pieces of wood so just you want chunks little chunks like this you know scraps from this and that these old two-by-four chunks work really well I like these best just about this length yeah used up a little more than half the charcoal and half the pile quite a bit.

Of fuel of course I'm not very good at this and so you know if I had to do it over again I think I could have done it much quicker and used but much less fuel but you know it's been over a year since I made this Forge I've been using it quite heavily and let.

Me show you how well it's held up and kind of some of the pros and cons first off the big thing is I'm using a wooden base and you can see here there's some bird marks we're occasionally hot coals will fall off the side and get in these cracks and burn and you can see you can see here and maybe down here a few places that.

It's burned the wood this side not so bad because usually I'm working on this side I can see it happen and I could just brush the coal off so what I've done to keep that from happening is when I build a fire I take one log and just put it right there and I take another log put it right there and I put my coals my fire in between and that keeps.

Coals from spilling over a bigger problem with this design is that it Wiggles a lot you can see here there's quite a bit of play and so when you've got something in the vise and you're sawing on it or whatever this thing shakes and shimmy is quite a bit and the more shimmies the the looser it gets so occasionally I have to go through and.

Put nails back in and since I did this video I added these cross pieces here and here and over on this side and down there to try to give it a little bit more rigidity and I really need add some more so if you're doing this design at home and you want this thing to hold up well under for many years use exterior deck screws and add more cross.

Pieces another thing I have done differently is in the video you saw me use sand and gravel to make the forge wouldn't do that just gravel don't even monkey with the sand now let me show you the anvil the anvil here is held up pretty well for a $65 anvil it's it's surprisingly soft steel and so there's little dents in it.

And from where you know you miss a good chunk of these dents are from where I let the Boy Scouts come and work on my my anvil and a lot of them just missed so much that they they just swing as hard as they could without much accuracy and so a lot of these dents are from Boy Scouts but all in all for being a really cheap set up that I did myself without a.

Lot of prior experience it's held up really well to a lot of use I've used this thing a bunch and I'm pretty proud of it so it's a design that definitely can be approved upon and if you have better materials and better tools and better skills go for it but this'll work if you're looking to just get into the supplier to the Hobby this will do it.

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