Old timer told me to water my forge fire clay every night and I thought he was crazy

Mike the farrier near Durango said to spray down the clay lining after each use, I ignored him for 6 months and now I got cracks so bad I gotta reline the whole forge this weekend, anyone else had a similar piece of advice they brushed off at first?

2 comments

2 Comments

adams8217d ago

Man that old timer knew what he was talking about! I did the exact same thing with my forge a couple years back, figured I knew better than the guy who had been doing it for 40 years. About 4 months in I noticed some hairline cracks but I just kept on working. By month 8 I had pieces of clay falling off on my workpiece, ended up having to scrap a whole batch of knives because of embedded clay bits. Now I spray it down like clockwork after every session, takes maybe 30 seconds but saves hours of headache later. Sometimes you just gotta eat crow and listen to the guys who have been there.

sam_harris6817d ago

Oh one small thing worth mentioning - spraying it down is good but you actually wanna be careful not to oversaturate the whole forge. The old timer prolly meant to just mist the outside shell and maybe the burner tubes, not drench the whole interior. I made that mistake at first, thought more was better. Ended up rusting out my burner tubes way faster than normal cause water got inside them. Just a light spritz on the refractory where you see it drying out, that's the trick.