Soup can forge help

[Dannytsg]

Managed to get quite a large soup can and fancy making myself a gas powered forge. I have seen a video on YouTube on a smaller soup can forge and wanted to clarify the following:

Does the lining have to be plaster or can I use cement?
Will a soup can forge provide adequate heat to make a hammer head into an axe head and files into knife blades?
My proposed heat source will firstly be a propane torch? Will this provide enough heat or should I aim to use a better burner?

Any other suggestions welcome as I want to get building on this at the weekend.

Cheers

 

[Dave Budd]

The lining will need to take the heat, so cement likely won't do it (to be honest without some serious additives I have my doubts about plaster too!). Proper ceramic fibre liner isn't expensive and it definately works! I get most of my refractory materials from Castree Kilns, but ebay has some for £17 per meter and that is way more than one soup can worth! Or you could just buy a bunch of soft refractory bricks and pile them up.

As to whether the torch will get a hammer head to temperature, well that depends on what sort of tip you have on your torch If its a big one, then maybe.

Check out the One Brick Forge for a simple gas forge set up. It will do small knives but not axes. Without buying at least a decent burner (or building one) and then investing in proper refractory, then a cobbled together gas forge is most likely nt going to work for anything bigger than medium sized blades. A charcoal forge is muc easier to knock up out of bugger all with no money outlay if you want to forge bigger stuff

 

[Dannytsg]

Cheers Dave, very much appreciate your informed input. I will have a look into the one brick forge idea and see how that sits.

 

[Firebow Swagger]

the brick one is the way to go for big stuff , the only reason i made a can forge was lack of space, but it does keep my shed warm.