That $400 forge I bought off Facebook Marketplace was a total dud

I picked up a used forge from a guy in Bakersfield thinking I got a steal. First fire up, the refractory cracked in three places and the burner wouldn't hold a steady flame. Lost $400 and two weekends trying to fix it before I just scrapped it. Anyone else get burned buying secondhand forge gear that someone swore was 'barely used'?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendysanchez8d ago

Did you try checking if the burner orifice was clogged or just mismatched to the gas pressure? I've had good luck patching cracked refractory with rigidizer and ceramic wool but the whole thing is usually toast if the structure's that far gone.

sarah8189d ago

Most people don't check if the refractory is still good before buying, but a quick scratch test with a screwdriver tells you everything. If it crumbles or flakes off easy, the forge has been heated and cooled too many times and is basically shot. That burner issue was probably a sign the whole thing was poorly built from the start, not just old.

logan_young299d ago

Read a metallurgy paper a few years back that talked about how thermal cycling messes with ceramic fiber and castable refractories at the molecular level. The author explained that each time you heat it up and let it cool down, the crystalline structure shifts a tiny bit. After enough cycles, the binder between the fibers or aggregates starts to break down, and that's exactly what you're seeing when it flakes off under a screwdriver. A buddy of mine had an old forge that looked fine from the outside but would leave dust on your fingers if you rubbed the inside wall. Turned out the previous owner had been running it way hotter than recommended for years. He ended up having to reline the whole thing with new kaowool and rigidizer, which wasn't cheap. You're dead on about that burner problem probably being a symptom of a bigger build quality issue too, not just age.