Years ago, I taught "shop" and had a regular commercial gas fired forge - had my kids do small projects like make scratch awls out of 1/4" cold roll - draw to a point, twist the shank and forge a round eye. Had a lot of un with it.
So . . . I'm retired and would like to try forging some steel trigger guards out of 1/8" thick cold roll for use on muzzleloading rifles - I like plain, simple southern style rifles.
I have looked at gas fired forges - flabbay, etc. - and don't want to tie a lot of money up for just a few triger guards or possibly a butt plate or two. I have a small anvil that will e adequate or what I'm looking at doing, a good five and future I can make some simple jigs out of flat stock and bolts, etc. for making the hands I wanto.
My question is on a heat source for heating the metal before forfing. I recently switched from casting in an iron pot over a propane hot plate to one of the Lee electric pots. I have a new single burner propane hot plate that I hook to a 20# tank. I'm thinking that if I lay down a layer of fire brick and set the hot plate on top to protect from "down head" radiating down on the hoard I set it on stretched between two sawhorses, and then sit fire trick upright on the tow outside edits of he cast iron hotplate - then lay fire brick across the top of them to form a "heat chamber" - it will work as a small forte furnace for heating the strip of what will probably be 1/8 X 3/4 cold roll that I will he rough profile cutting to shape and then forging in to a traitor guard.
Once I get the trigger guard rough forted, I'll cool and file to smooth out - the reheat and quench in oil which should ice it a "black" finish?
My question is - will the propane hot plate with they fire brick set up as described to form a heat chamber work well enough to get the temperature of the cold roll to where it can be hammer forged in to shape?
Again, I just thinking of using this set up as a "temporary" forge furnace to do a couple of trigger guards, possibly a butt plate or two and some small items such as a forged trigger, etc. - no hardening, tempering, etc. Possibly some small hammer welding on a fold in the trigger guard - not sure.
Thanks for any help/advice - appreciate it.