why design a charcoal forge?

 ''Over the last fifteen years I have been striving to lower my environmental impact as much as possible in all areas of my life. This included a major look at the sustainability of my traditional blacksmithing practice. Amongst other things, I stopped burning coke/coal in my forges and disconnected my electric forge blowers - I started looking into using charcoal as fuel instead.
However, it quickly became clear that it wasn't such a simple conversion to make and that adaptations were needed to make my forge hearth suitable for using charcoal as fuel. So, I embarked on a journey to design and build myself a 'proper' charcoal forge.''
LISA WISDOM   -   CHARCOAL FORGE DESIGNER & ARTIST BLACKSMITH
The daughter of a Potter and a Hand-Weaver, Lisa grew up immersed in Cornwall's thriving crafts scene in the 1980's. She has pursued the art of metalworking since the age of eleven when introduced to silversmithing by a family friend. A love of metalworking and in particular, Blacksmithing, has taken her on a journey that has included training at Birmingham School of Jewellery and The National school of blacksmithing in Herefordshire. She returned to Cornwall in 2008 to set up her forge...
''I live and work on a 17 acre nature reserve and low impact/sustainable artists community near Falmouth in Cornwall. The land is the site of a disused granite quarry and all the buildings are old quarry workshops. Here in the 100 or so year old forge we have a designated 'live/work' unit. We are surrounded by our permaculture/forest garden. '' 

The 'Sustainable Charcoal' Forge Project.


Having done much experimentation in my own forge and finally developed a design that worked for charcoal. I started to think about how my forge design could reach a wider audience, perhaps in the form of a whole unit rather than the drop-in parts that I had cobbled together for my own 100yr old granite hearth. Then I thought back to when I had made my own forge as part of my training at Hereford and how helpful it was to me starting out. The new generation of Blacksmiths are facing such huge challenges in setting up their own businesses in this time of rising fuel and steel costs and I feel that to drive a change we need to strike at a student level.
I applied for and was awarded funding in the hope that I could create a viable charcoal forge design prototype suitable for a working professional smith.

Why was it important to develop this tool?

Through my research whilst developing this design, it became clear that the knowledge of using charcoal as fuel is something that needs to be re-learned by the majority of the smithing community in the UK. Although charcoal was used as forge fuel from the iron-age until around the industrial revolution, coke and coal have been the mainstay of the UK blacksmithing industry ever since, how to manage and use a charcoal fire for smithing is knowledge that has mostly slipped away. 

Differences in design of charcoal forge to coke forge are subtle but important. A charcoal forge, as a ready-made and accessible tool, has not existed up until now. Other heat source options do of course exist - Gas forges are an excellent source of heat for a blacksmith and with the new Swann Flame trimmer, gas consumption can be reduced by up to 50%. Induction forges are another fantastic alternative to gas or coke forges however they are restrictive in scope of use and will possibly never be a suitable complete alternative, instead they may become one of the several tools in the solution for a lower impact approach in a smith’s toolkit.

A charcoal forge can be used as a complete tool,  it has great versatility, and when used in conjunction with a local source of sustainable charcoal is very low impact indeed. It needs no mains electricity to run it and once the initial costs of building have been met it has little running costs apart from in charcoal. (Currently around £2.50/kilo) It is a tool that, with minimal maintenance, could last for a hundred years.
Wisdom Charcoal Forge © 2025 by Lisa Wisdom is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/