MickSCollins

This one's good, but I'm sure everyone's heard it.

Three people check into a hotel. They pay $30 to the manager and go to their room. The manager finds out that the room rate is $25 and gives $5 to the bellboy to return.
On the way to the room the bellboy reasons that $5 would be difficult to split among three people so he pockets $2 and gives $1 to each person. Now each person paid $10 and got back $1.
So they paid $9 each, totaling $27. The bellboy has $2, totaling $29.
What happened to the other dollar?

MT: The scissor jack idea is ingenious, I may just have to borrow it.

I work a large range of stock and some very strange shapes, so the ability to change the volume of the forge to match is ideal.

I didn't figure that the type of insulation would make that big of a difference, but it does make sense.

As to not worrying about efficiency, if you don't have time to do it right the first time, you've got time to do it again. It's a lot easier and cheaper to change the shape of something before you've made it than after you got it all put together and working. If you can make something in such a way that it'll save you a lot of money and hassle trying to fix it if you didn't, shouldn't you?

I'm thinking about building me a gas forge, but I want to get a good idea of what I'm looking at in terms of fuel consumption and efficiency.

What are the dimensions of your forge?
How many burners do you use?
What PSI do you forge at, and if you weld, what do you take it up to?
What size and how long does a bottle of propane typically last you?
How long does it take your forge to get up to temp?
Is it naturally aspirated or blown?

If there's anything else that could be considered pertinent, I'd be much obliged if you shared it.

There's a big difference, in my opinion, between the TiNi bits and cobalt bits, especially when it comes to harder metals. A friend of mine called me a few weeks ago needing help with a bolt snapped off in his engine block, and a chromium vanadium bolt extractor snapped off rather neatly, and conveniently might I add, in the middle of it. After an hour of nothing with the TiNi coated bits, which he swears by, I got fed up with it and got my cobalt bits. After about 30 minutes, most of the extractor was eaten away with only a bit of dulling to the tip.

At $2 a bit from Northern, it's a bit pricey, but I'd be more than willing to spend it. Since I've been using them, I've noticed that the work's been going a lot faster.

That's just me though.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure, and never simple.