BeatusLiebowitz wrote:KurtHuhn wrote:a touch of satanite
I thought this was a joke and had to google it. Can you substitute salamandarine or balrogorous for it?
I have a bag of bubble alumina around here somewhere... I bet that a pipe lined with a thin layer of Satanite topped by bubble alumina with a thin layer of ITC-100 would not only never burn out, but would increase combustion efficiency by something like 1100 percent.
Just think, use a little care when packing, and one single light will do the trick. The ITC-100 is an infrared reflector so the center of the bowl will stay hot, the bubble alumina reflects the whole spectrum and insulates (and is also highly resistant to alkaline fluxes if you like to add borax to your tobacco...), and the Satanite resists very high temperatures, thus keepng the wood cool, even if the bowl wall is only .002" thick...
Sorry about that, I just had to write it.
Nick, Do go check 'em out. You'll get a lot of ideas about how and where you want to build your own forge. I prefer commercial cast iron firepots to homebuilt ones for coal forges because most people who make them at home don't know what they're doing before they fire up the welder. The cast pots are shaped by 150 years of experience with what works. They are relatively expensive, so if you can study the ones they have at Cannonsburgh and replicate one in 1/2" or thicker steel plate that could work. However, I've been running a Centaur Forge cast pot for ten years with zero problems other than sometimes having to chip clinker off the clinker-breaker ball, but that's part of the price of admission with a coal forge anyway.
Here's my forge.
Wooden base built from untreated 2x4s supports a 24" x 36" tabletop of 3/8" steel plate with 1" angle iron edges welded on to stiffen it. There's a rough hole torched in the middle in which the firepot hangs by its rim, as it's designed to do. The hood is something I welded up from 11-gauge steel sheet to connect the forge with the chimney behind it. As you can see, the side-draft expansion chamber idea works REALLY well.
There's no way I can make the changes I want until this snow goes away. 
Hot steel works like really stiff play-doh, and most of the safety stuff is pretty obvious unless you go with a gas forge.