A New Idea (for me) – Induction Forge

Not by any means a new idea, but seemingly available at home with enough power to forge steel – probably a little newer.

I envisioned buying an electric heat treat oven when I started making more stuff out of metal years ago. But I haven’t yet found a practical steel for my purposes that demands taking up space, and worse, waiting for the thing to do what it does ramping temps up and down.

So, as I add another tool for metalwork, it still isn’t an evenheat or paragon furnace. Instead, where I spend time is heating steel to shape it and to forge weld the bolster. I want control, not just a high heat source – especially if this may be usable to heat chisels by eye as I do with a forge – to quench them.

For plain steels, I’m not much into the idea that everything has to be soaked. It can be, but my tested samples suggest that it’s not needed and in the case of 26c3, my samples were better than furnace heat treated samples by a large margin.

So – Then What?

I have three different forge type setups, all gas forges. One is just a paint can (small) with insulation. A second is two diameters of stainless exhaust pipe – long and narrow, capable of high controllable heat and good for knives and paring chisels. And the third is a typical two burner stainless forge that would be big enough to heat axes and mauls. I don’t need that. I need higher, faster heat that can be directed. That’s what he device below does -create a short distance field around a coil of copper tubing and apply a lot of current to it. With the coil sized right for the project, there is enough power to burn steel and reach temperatures you don’t want to go to. From demonstrations, it appears there is also enough control to do a lot less, and do it fast. it should afford the ability to heat chisels to be forge shaped in about 30 seconds, one at a time, so no losing track of what’s in the forge and what isn’t.

It’s easy to find videos of these in use on youtube, I haven’t wired this one yet – they do require a lot of current and the manual demands a direct wired circuit, no plug. 40 amps at 240. Sounds like a lot, but it’s no more draw than a kitchen oven with all of the burners on.

The bottom unit is just a water cooler made for a welder. it circulates water in through the forge and into the coil continuously so that the coil doesn’t heat itself or get burned by the hot steel around it. The whole thing is a nifty idea, and hopefully it will do exactly what I want.

if you’re offended by my hand sawn shop constructed screwed together table, I’d challenge you to think about whether you’d like to spend extra hours making a table for something like this, or if you’d like to make half a set of chisels with that time. I’d prefer the latter, and can’t think of too many amateur shop nesters who actually make much. I got into that for just a little bit of time early on, and then realized that it’s like treading water at best. No thanks!

If you’re in the cap of believing that hand ripped wood is just a mess that requires a lot of time, look at the faces of three of the legs. they are straight off of a five point rip saw – as fast as i can rip in rhythm, which is different from “as fast as I can go”. to rip this by hand instead of setting up the track saw or the wall hanger table saw, about 50 linear feet of ripping in total, was about 20 minutes. SYP cuts fast and is nice to work with in general until the the rings dry. Once the rings have some age, it’s a pain.

the edge of the plywood at the bottom is also just handsawn – you can see the little “teat” of the top veneer that didn’t come off quite so neatly as the two ends of the cut met. Two years into the hobby, I would’ve been ashamed to make something this crude. and even with power tools, it would’ve taken three times as long. No thanks!

Oh….and hand ripping this was a pleasure. I sit on it like an old fat guy. I’m not that old. it’s kind of like taking a walk when the stock and the cut made allows sitting. You’re the clamp, and only spending energy sawing the wood, not holding yourself up and getting red faced.