Forging with Venturi style burners.

[metalmangeler]

Try just closeing down the air intake some with some duct tape (easy choke). It sounds like it should be welding.

[Rich Hale]

I shut the gas off on larger billets to let the heat sink all the way through, It it does not reach an even heat throughout you will almost always get a spot in the middle of the billet that does not weld. It is a simple precaution to avoid a problem for me. Sounds like you got a lot of things to try and work out your problems,,,,

[Ian]

Can't be 100% sure but my 2p's worth is to try to choke the burner first. I also think that having a ton of dragon's breath is no good either, seems to me thats combustion going on outside the forge thus wasting a lot of BTU's.

[Zsartell]

I had a few free minutes last night so I decided to try and cover a little less than half of each of my venturi's (with duct tape). It made absolutely no difference in how my forge sounded. I also kept the pressure down a bit and tried a faggot weld with 20 mule team and Boric acid. I got absolutely nowhere. Actually this time I believe that my temperature wat too low. I waited until the piece kinda disappeared in the lining of the forge, but it did not stick at all. I think I am going to finish my heat exchanger, put the air adjuster on that and go with bigger jets and put the jets closer to the burner tube. I built this forge mostly for forge welding billets and by golly I'm going to make it work and with the heat exchanger I'm hoping that it will be efficient as can be.

[Rich Hale]

I am not sure what you mean by a heat exchanger but there are a whole lot of basic venturi style gassers that weld just fine. Simple is sometimes the best way to go. You might even be well off to buy a premade gasser from a known maker or at least buy burners that you can use that are proven to work. Be safe..and have fun

[Zsartell]

I purchased the burners from a well known source. I did not make them myself. The heat exchanger is something that preheats the air coming into the burner. They have been proven to reduce the amount of gas needed to operate your forge. I understand that the heat exchanger has nothing to do with getting up to heat, it is just something I want to try out. I know that I am just dealing with an improper fuel to air ratio and that I need to do more tweaking. I know it will get up to welding temps easy, but there just must be too much air rushing into the chamber. I just need to "finish" my forge and get to know how it operates. One of these days I will get some pictures of it. for everyone.

[steve sells]

it stands to logic to get it working BEFORE you modify it with heat exchangers, turbo lifts. and transporters.

Add things later after you get the hang of welding temps. don't frustrate yourself, before you learn to have fun.

[Fionnbharr (finn:-)]

Try welding something other than AS36 hot rolled 1/2 square... A LOT of what we are getting is polluted remelt, and is Hard and sometimes impossible to weld unless your welding technic is just perfect. I had a boy who was working with me some and he could make chain link welds all day long (I think he was using cold rolled 3/8 round, but it might have be HR??), but could not get a simple faggot weld in 1/2" square. The mill scale on HR can give you problems too, ifn you don't take it off first. If you were sticking to something else in the fire, then it is more likely something wrong with you your material or how you are handling it would be my guess...

In our local group we have noticed and been talking about how hard it is to get the new remelt steel to forge weld one guy was guessing copper contamination as the culprit. Personally I have noticed that some of the AS36 seems to be hot short and will crumble because of excessive grain growth, especially on a narrow neck after you stop working that area. Modern materials have different characteristic than old wrought iron or even old steel. You need to modify your technics and your designs to avoid the weaknesses and play to the strengths of the materials you use. Good modern steel is very homogenious, and can be moved fast under the hammer. Old wrought iron isn't homgenious at all, and unless it is a Very fine grade of wrought it has a tendency to split if you push it too hard and too fast, but it forge welds beautifully, something that isn't true of mild steel;-) It is very interesting to note that some of the things from the past that we are so impressed with in our modern age were done simply to overcome the limits of the materials at hand, and to take advantage of some of the benifits of the material. Pattern welding in Europe, and Japanese laminated blades are prime examples... Of course forge welding was everywhere in the past... Sorry about the digression into a history lesson, I have been working in my head on some material for a demo at an up coming conference... ;-)