Forge hoods

Dan Seaver

Dan Seaver

KNIFE MAKER
Forge hoods are an overlooked safety item they no hot shop should be without. The problem I see too often is that when people bother to make one, they don't put the effort into making a good large one, rather I often see a small hood that sits 3 feet above the forge and mainly acts as a decorative piece. I'm hoping we can change that and at least get guys to build a small one that works.

Post your pictures so we can give people ideas on different hoods they can build.

Forgehood.jpg

Mine is built from pieces of 1/16" sheet that I had laying around, it sits 7 feet tall and measures 48"x28" at the base and tapers to 24"x11" at the top. All the seams are welded along the entire length to give it a good seal.

My CO monitor will display at 30ppm and above. Now that the hood is in place the highest it has read is 32ppm because of the wind causing issues. :thumbup1:
 
I'm very interested to see what others post. I don't have a hood. I just open a window and turn on a fan... I know. Bad.
 
Don't have one here either, I have a garage still door I open along with a another door on the other side and I get a lot of cross breeze through the shop. Plus my smithy is temporarily in my machine shop area but I plan on moving it all to the other end of my shop building, soon as I can tear down the 30 X 20 firewood storage and rebuild it. It will be nice to get my coal forge inside and I can use some hood ideas.
 
Dan
Does the hood have a exhaust fan in it, or are you relying on heat rising to cary the CO2 out?
Good looking hood, and a VERY real concern for folks that have an indoor forge.

Thanks for sharing!

God Bless
Mike
 
Thanks Mike, the welds are a bit sloppy on it but welding 20 feet of 1/16" sheet with a stick welder will do that. For right now I rely on the heat rising to carry the Co2 and fumes out. I was laid off from work but I intend to put a nice exhaust fan in the chimney once I'm employed again.

My forge hood has two purposes, to remove the CO and to remove the borax fumes/heavy metal oxides from forge welding. I still wear a respirator with P100 cartridges when I'm forging since my power hammer drips oil and grease and there are fumes coming off the billet. It may seem a bit over the top but breathing in the stuff we work with is just foolish in my opinion. :9: For just forging blades though I feel that a respirator is not necessary.


Grant at a minimum invest in a decent CO monitor that has a digital read out. Before I installed my hood I would forge with two 4'x8' doors and a 4'x2' window open. Even with a fan going I would still hit 130PPM in the first 15 minutes of my forge running, I never saw it get higher because I would turn my large squirrel cage blower on before or at that point.

CO poisoning is cumulative because CO bonds with your hemoglobin better than O2; thus your body has to replace the old cells with new ones to recover from CO poisoning. This is why OSHA allows a maximum of 50ppm in the work place for a 40 hour work week.
 
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I just looked up the symptoms of CO2 poisoning at different levels. Based on the headaches I get while forging I think I'm definitely hitting the 100 ppm - 200 ppm level. Going to get a CO monitor before I fire up the forge again.

Definitely making a hood and exhaust fan a priority now.
 
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