What an amazing video. Thanks for sharing it with us. Your work with these blacksmiths is awesome. What a wonderful way to promote our art form . You can see the joy in their faces.
I'm hoping to sell a large lathe we have and will use that money to buy our forge. I can't wait to show my husband this video as he took a blacksmithing course in New England years ago. He seems to have a great feel for it.
What type of forge would you recommend that's small enough for our studio? Again, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Truely inspirational!!!!Janet

Thanks Janet for taking a look at the video. You know, even though the workshop was based on some simple blacksmithing techniques, the Peruvians were very pleased and proud of their accomplishments. More than 360 individuals took the workshop and over 90% of them do not own a forge. This presents a problem for them, but it is something I am trying to work with Aceros Arequipa, the sponsers. I'm hoping to give another workshop in the future which will give the opportunity to these metalworkers to build their own gas forges.

As to your question of what forge to get. I personally enjoy coal forges. Thing is that it may be hard for you to have easy access to coal in your locale. The alternative is to go with a gas forge. NC Tools makes some good gas forges, and there seems to be some good plans on the Internet on how to build your own gas forge. Maybe some of the other blacksmiths here on ArtMetal can chime in and tell us about the best gas forges available.

gas forgeI'll chime in on the Gas forges.

If propane was super cheap I would buy a big Johnson forge but since it is not for the present moment I will stick with my open end atmospheric Mankel.
The reason I like it is due to the fact you can stick a long piece in it with curves etc. The plus side of the open ends. The cons of this forge are the venturis they are not as nice as the aluminum ones you get with an NC Tool forge.
Pretty soon I am going to get NC Tool to build me one of this configuration with three of the aluminum venturis.

Hi Janet, I recently bought a Whisper Daddy II from NC Forge and like it a lot. I have to agree with Jim though, although mine has a nice large door/opening in the front and a 2"x2" door in the back, it is has it's limits with large shapes, say in the middle of the picket. I've been able to do it, but it's not as easy as Jim's and neither are as flexible as the open bed of a coal forge. I don't have a whole lot of experience forging, but I ran into the limitations of my forge quickly. The forge I was educated on was similar to the whisper daddy only it was about twice as tall and twice as deep. The front and the back panels were actually gates that slid vertically on a counter weight system so that if you wanted to you could have a 14"wx14t" opening in both the front and/or back or you could have a 14"wx2"t opening to conserve heat while forging smaller items. They made it themselves and were reluctant to give me the plans. I went ahead and bought the whisper daddy b/c didn't feel that comfortable building my own, but now that I've seen the burners close up, I'll probably try to build my next forge like the one I described above.

Jake