Blacksmith Diaries Pt. 1
The Beginning - Forge Prep
I got a Mr. Vocano Hero home forge kit as a gift for Christmas and we’re setting it up at CAV. It took a little longer to prepare the forge than we anticipated but mostly because of the required air drying time. The kit included the burner, encasement, ceramic fiber blanket, and two solutions for preparing the forge. The tools we needed to buy included a propane tank, anvil, flame retardant gloves, paint brushes and a spray bottle. We already had a few hammers but we may buy additional tools for the metal working part down the road.
There were two main steps to the preparation - applying a rigidizer and applying a refractory powder.
The rigidizer was a pink solution that we mixed with water and sprayed with a spray bottle on all sides of the ceramic blanket. Once the blanket was fully coated, we put it back inside the encasement and let it air dry. Keenan and I were both busy for a week so we let the rigidizer dry for ample time and then began the refractory process.
The process for applying the refractory powder was simple and not all that time consuming. It took about 5 minutes to mix the powder and water. We used a kitchen scale to measure the proper ratio of both. One mistake we made early on was not applying enough refractory cement at one time. If we tried to dab a little on in a spot where some had dried to the blanket, it would stick and pull the existing cement off. It was much more efficient to put larger amounts on and spread it around evenly. The kit comes with enough to do two solid coats on the blanket and by the end you can no longer see the pink stained ceramic fiber blanket. After another 24 hours of air drying, we began the heat curing process.
In order to heat cure the refractory cement, we would turn on the burner and let the heat increase for 30 seconds, turn off the burner, let the forge cool down a bit, then repeat gradually increasing the time the burner was on each time. It was tempting to skip the heat curing step because it seemed to be working just fine but the set up instructions are pretty clear about not rushing the process!
The set up is now complete and we are ready to start forging!
