Soft fire brick vs hard fire brick

B

bradgatlin

New Member
Ok guys this my first post. What are the pros and cons of soft fire brick vs hard fire brick in a forge?

Also, I know I can order soft fire brick but the shipping is ridiculously expensive. Is there a safe recipe to mold your own?

sorry for the silly questions.

Thanks in advance

Brad
 
Don't know enough to give a good answer, I know soft are higher temp but am looking forward to the answers as well. Welcome to the KD pack. Ed
 
I'm no expert, but I can tell you what I've learned. A few years back I tried to make a 1-brick forge with a hard fire brick because I didn't have a local supplier of soft bricks and didn't want to pay the shipping. It was an epic fail. The hard fire bricks seem to absorb the heat, so the chamber took forever to get warm, and it didn't seem to disperse the heat very evenly. I gave up on it before trying to heat treat.

I eventually ordered the soft firebricks and built a 1-brick set up with those. It didn't take any time at all to get the whole inside of the chamber glowing and easily got a scrap of 1095 to nonmagnetic within a couple minuts. I've since upgraded to a two brick forge with soft brick on the inside and a layer of hard brick on the outside just for some additional insulation. It works pretty well for me, until I can afford an oven.

If you're only looking to do a small 1 or 2 brick forge and Boss is out of bricks, I'd check out www.hightemptools.com/firebricks.html they do flat rate shipping on 3 packs of bricks.



IMG_20141204_084934_268.jpg

-Aaron
 
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