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My old coal forge finally rusted through the firepot after 12 years
I was working on a batch of leaf hooks last Tuesday and noticed the fire was burning weird, then saw a big hole near the tuyere. I patched it with some scrap plate and furnace cement for now, but it's not a good fix. Has anyone here replaced a firepot on a Centaur Forge rig before, or should I just build a new one from scratch?
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butler.shane2mo ago
Man, that's rough timing in the middle of a project. My buddy had a similar thing happen on his old rivet forge. He tried to weld a patch in but the metal around it was just too thin and crispy, kept burning new holes. Ended up ordering a new firepot from Centaur because he wanted to keep the original table, and it was a pretty straight swap. Took some grinding to get the old one out clean though.
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jade6392mo ago
Yeah, grinding out the old one sounds like the worst part, @butler.shane.
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Funny how things always fail right when you're in the middle of a project, isn't it? I've noticed that pattern across so many things in life. The water heater only gives up the ghost on Christmas morning, the truck breaks down on the way to a job, and your forge pot picks a Tuesday while you're cranking out hooks to go south. In my experience, patching rarely buys you more than a few months of peace of mind. You end up spending almost as much time fussing with the repair as you would just swapping it out clean. If the rest of the table is solid, I'd go with a direct replacement from Centaur. A straight swap usually ends up being less headache than trying to rehab something that's already past its prime.
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