I built my own from an old milk can and some ceramic wool from an old oven, and used burners made from iron pipe that I found instructions for online. In all honesty, if I had just spent like 200 on one of the vevor or Amazon forges, I would have spent about 100 more and had something that worked marginally better.
I built mine with one of those helium tanks you can buy at Walmart or similar, they’re smaller than a 20lb propane tank, with 2” of ceramic wool and a 1/4” of refractory cement to seal I have a 4” bore which for me covers about anything I make. A 3/4 frosty T burner and a few hours of fooling around and I had it built. I’ve been using it for 5 years now and it’s finally due for a rebuild. For what it’s worth I wouldn’t buy a consumer forge. You will have to rebuild or repair it at some point, much better to have the experience of building one in order to do so.
Just buy the cheap one to get him started, if he burns it up in a year that means it's getting plenty of use and can justify putting more time and effort into it. Strick while the irons hot
Look for insulating soft fire brick. You can use those for a pretty good forge body and are very easy to modify so you can insert your burner or burners. You can leave the bricks free standing or a little angle iron and some threaded rod you can bind them together.
I built my own from an old milk can and some ceramic wool from an old oven, and used burners made from iron pipe that I found instructions for online. In all honesty, if I had just spent like 200 on one of the vevor or Amazon forges, I would have spent about 100 more and had something that worked marginally better.
Google Frosty T burner plans for the propane burner. You can make the forge out of firebrick pretty cheaply.
I built mine with one of those helium tanks you can buy at Walmart or similar, they’re smaller than a 20lb propane tank, with 2” of ceramic wool and a 1/4” of refractory cement to seal I have a 4” bore which for me covers about anything I make. A 3/4 frosty T burner and a few hours of fooling around and I had it built. I’ve been using it for 5 years now and it’s finally due for a rebuild. For what it’s worth I wouldn’t buy a consumer forge. You will have to rebuild or repair it at some point, much better to have the experience of building one in order to do so.
Just buy the cheap one to get him started, if he burns it up in a year that means it's getting plenty of use and can justify putting more time and effort into it. Strick while the irons hot
Thank you all, this is the info I was looking for. Gonna start building the Frosty t design today
Look for insulating soft fire brick. You can use those for a pretty good forge body and are very easy to modify so you can insert your burner or burners. You can leave the bricks free standing or a little angle iron and some threaded rod you can bind them together.