kraythe

Required? No. 3$ to have cheap insurance to save the house and potentially the family? Sold!

Timely bump as a new crop of s,it's wanting to build forges gets underway

Be careful building burners if you are new to welding. Blown burners need to be gas tight and that is not simple. Last thing you need is a jet of hot propane out the top of the forge. I build ribbon burners but after I mig the seams, I take another pass with oxy acetylene torch to remelt the weld and flow it so it is gas tight. A TIG rig would do as well but I don't have the cash for that. :)

I wanted to get away from cast jobless. I have done a ton of forge building and burner building but u just find that the bricks are the easiest to build, maintain and configure. You can have it small and flat one day and taller and cooler the next day. The valve springs might work. I think I would want to spread the load out so I wouldn't use a plain nut but rather a piece of bar stock against the side of the bricks. Arched roofs are an interesting idea but my blown ribbon burner wouldn't dovetail with that well if the bricks are on edge.

I am sorry I couldn't come but it was just impossible with work. I need to get my forge back up and running first as I haven't been in the shop for months. I am just a hobbyist anyway, not an expert or anything. I am sure you guys would all cream me in ability.

Greetings, I mostly use firebricks for a forge and I am having a problem that I was hoping to get suggestions on. I would like to create a forge that had a top that spans more than one brick but am having difficulty figuring out how to span the gap when it's longer than a single brick. The thoughts I had were. 1) put a threaded rid through bricks on their side and clamp them into one brick. The problem is that these bricks are quite fragile and I think in thermal cycling they would crack as they have nowhere to go against clamp pressure. 2) put something under them to support them. The question is of cours what could I put under them that would survive welding temps and not add a ton of thermal mass like hard bricks would. Any suggestions on these two or another technique?

Awesome. I will check them out. Thanks for the heads up!

Greetings, I just moved from colorado to Austin texas and I was just wondering if anyone knew a good low cost metal source in the area, especially one that has scrap as well as stick metal but doesnt reuire purchasing a whole stick. Thanks.

How is the emissions from a Coke based forge? If that is an option then I might go with that. Charcoal might work if I could find it in sufficient enough quantities. Buying it by the bag from the hardware store can get expensive. Also is there any special fire tending procedures for using charcoal? I know for sure that it can get hot enough because i saw a video about smelting pig iron in africa using charcoal (impressive vid by the way).

Problem is minimizing smoke is not what i need, I need smoke elimination (at least smoke that has any odor or visibility) I dont mind if CO comes out the chmimney or oher invis gasses but if there is anything like real smoke comming out it is a no starter. That is why I am currently working with a propane forge and dealing with the extra scale as best I can.

The problem is I have seen lots of forge construction vids of similar nature but what I really wanted to know is hw it worked out over the long term, not just how to put it together.

I have drilled soft brick with success using a drill press driven by hand with a hole saw as a bit. I don't want to cast the roof because the thermal cycling will crack the roof without a doubt.

I would love to be able to use a solid fuel forge but the problem is that I live in a residential community and if I start spewing out coal smoke, my neighbors will flip and shut me down. What I am wondering is if there is any forge design, fuel or other method I can use to create a forge that has very low emissions but uses solid fuel. I had thought of perhaps something like a gassifier design or something that would reburn the exhaust fumes. Any advice is appreciated.

I am trying to update my forge configuration and I have designed a side mounted ribbon burner that uses a soft fire brick for the flare protection. The jets are 3/8" ID steel tubes and the design is a pressurized plenum burner. What I want to do is mount the burner on one side of the forge which will be rectangular. The base will be made of soft fire brick with hard fire brick on top for the internal floor to be sacrificial for borax (I do a lot of cable welding). The idea for the sides is that they would be soft fire brick painted with ITC-100 on the hot face. So think of a square floor of 8 fire bricks and sides with the firebricks sitting flat with the internal edges as hot faces. What I want to do is make a roof for this forge that consists of soft fire bricks set on edge so that the 4.5" is the thickness of the roof, the 2.5" by 9" side is the hot face (with itc-100 coating) and the bricks are stacked to form the roof. The problem is I have to support the bricks or they will fall like a house of cards. I thought of drilling the bricks with a half inch threaded rod that would pass dirctly through thecenter of each brick and would have flat clamps on both sides that would allow them to be held clamped together (sort of like a vice) What I am concerned about is expansion and contraction of the bricks under heat. Soft firebricks are pretty soft and can be easily broken by hand. If they expand while clamped and when heated to glowing, they could come apart quite spectacularly. At the same time I would rather not use hard firebrick because the insulating properties are not as good and the thermal mass of those bricks is quite high. So does anyone have experience with clamping soft fire bricks and if so, what were the challenges you faced, if any? Thanks in advance.

Turbulence is good in the mixing part of the pipe. It ensures a complete mix. According to the laws of fluid dynamics you might get a better pressure by removing an elbow but the difference is negligible. The main pressure drop is in the flare tubes. On the other hand I shoved this thing in my brick pile even without the cast flare and it nearly melted iron in the forge. So it does well. I am actually playing with a couple of variants of this.