My tuyere pipe burnt through 20 minutes into a demo at the county fair, and a piece of rebar saved the whole thing

Jade Grant · 2026-10-09T23:55:05.217212+00:00

So this happened last Saturday at the Boone County fair, I was doing a little forge demo for the crowd, maybe 30 people standing around watching, and about 20 minutes in my tuyere pipe just burnt clean through right at the joint where it meets the fire pot. Air started leaking everywhere and my coal fire went from a nice hot mound to a sad smoky mess in like two minutes flat. I had a spare pipe back at the truck but it was the wrong diameter, so I'm standing there sweating with a crowd watching and nothing to work with. Older guy in the front row says his boy has some scrap rebar in the truck from a fencing job, so I grabbed a two foot piece, hammered one end flat, and jammed it in as a makeshift air pipe just to finish the hook I was working on. It wasn't pretty and the air flow was rough, but it got hot enough to keep going and honestly the crowd loved watching me figure it out live. Now I keep a cheap length of black iron pipe in the truck at all times, plus a backup joint clamp, cost me about $12 total. Lesson was less about the fix and more about not assuming my setup is gonna hold up when I'm away from my own forge. What do you all keep in your travel kit for stuff like this?

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My tuyere pipe burnt through 20 minutes into a demo at the county fair, and a piece of rebar saved the whole thing | Blacksmiths - Topic Shares