Enterprising farriers have built their own portable coal forges.

The concept is simple: With the few coal forge pots available, put it in a steel box (or a used beer keg), cut a door, attach short legs, hook up an electric blower and a chimney, and you’re in business… if you could find the right type of soft coal. Some improvised by using an old vacuum cleaner as the blower. This author found a 12-volt blower and hooked it up to my truck battery. A cheap rheostat controlled the blower. We drove down the road with a smoldering fire in the back of our trucks. Maybe there was a better way.

Several forward-thinking farriers, such as Ken Mankel, Donald Jones and Dave Willis, thought so. The idea of a portable propane forge would certainly be more practical, and it came to be. Slowly, either coal forges were replaced or farriers previously limited to cold shaping acquired a gas forge.

There was some early resistance to the gas forge. The early models were slow, noisy and difficult for forge welding. Farriers who were comfortable with a coal fire were not interested. By the mid 1980s, technology had improved enough that the gas forge became widespread, especially as more efficient models were developed.

The advantages of propane as a fuel instead of coal are obvious. Propane can be found everywhere, whereas good, soft coal supplies are limited and inconsistent. Soft coal needs to be burned down and changed to coke to produce a good fire, so it was a constant job to manage the fire properly. Some farriers used coke instead of coal because it is more uniform. Even though a coal fire is easier to forge weld in, it’s also easy to burn up an unattended shoe.

To learn more about using electric forges, read Steve Kraus’s article “Is the Forge Evolving to Electric?” featured in the June/July issue of American Farriers Journal.