1justin

Reil's bell reducer burners are no good, I've found. Because when the wind blows it disrupts the flow of gas. Somebody on here gave me blueprints for a T-Rex type burner that I made and is far superior to Reil burners, I can get a blue "torch" flame now that pretty much makes the didymium glasses I spent $50 on useless, before with Reil's I couldn't get anything but yellow flame. I'd be happy to send the print to you, measurements are mm because guy was swedish, so you'll need to convert. The exact measurements are not that important but I tried to stay w/in about 30 thou, and it turned out awesome! I'm a machinist too, so if you are not then you will need to find a machinist to make you some of the parts. It is way better than spending the $150 the guy charges for T-rex's though, but you can really tell where the money went with T-rex compared to Reil's. Anyway start a personal convo on here if you want me to send you the Adobe file.

Ok, thanks guys. It would be hard fire brick then, if it's all ceramic anyway. I'll try to get some photos up in the next couple of days. However my burners are just two pieces of about 12"x1" pipe with bell reducers at the top and nothing on the bottom. I dont have a lot of room to play around with on the inside, its w6"xh4"xd12" with w4"xh3" openings on both ends. So, can I insulate it with 1/2" of the ceramic wool stuff? I have 5 lbs. of satanite too, what about this?

I believe ceramic is different than hard fire brick, but not completely sure. I'm taking a ceramics course and we use a kiln made of hard fire brick which looks something similar to the ceramic block. The ceramic in my forge is a tan color, not sure the kiln is or not. Mine was not made by NC Tool, just some guy on ebay. So, you wont find my forge on their website. I was just looking online and my burners are definitely not NC burners, they look something like Reil burners without the bell reducer at the nozzle (where the flame comes out) are these EZ burners? I just looked up Ron Reil's design for EZ's and those have a bell reducer at the nozzle too, so I guess these are an extremely cheap hybrid of the Reil's.

They may be Reil burners. Just two pieces of 1" pipe, with a wider 2-2.5" section screwed on top where the propane shoots in. My welds are not contaminated, not delaminations, or inclusions either. Longer soak time helps, but it just wont get hot enough (especially now that one burner stopped working). I'm just sick of trying to make the adjustments with it burning using vice grips and my kevlar glove, half the time burning myself in the process anyway. The problem with the weld is not that I don't know how to make a good weld. I can do this all day long in a coke forge. The problem is that it gets hot on all sides except the very middle, where I can't see. Maybe, I do need to let it soak more when it looks ready to weld, since propane is much lower temp than a blasting coke fire. Anyway this causes a bubble in the weld, where later on in the heat treat the air expands and makes the bubble very apparent where it wasn't initially. All of my damascus is flat anyway, meaning I dont twist it or do anything that might cause delamination. I have done twists with good success in coke forge welded damascus, I just like the flat patterns more.

Awesome, thankyou so much! It is insulated with ceramic blocks. Venturi is the right word (as long as you are talking about the flow of propane sucking in air). It wont be a problem to convert. One of my burners recently went out, too. It's just too much of a pain to try and get everything lined up perfectly with the NC's, I think this must be the problem b/c its still shooting out propane, but for some reason it doesn't make it thru the neck of the burner. The T Rex says everything is easily adjustable, which is what makes me want to make one of something similar. Does the choke slide up and down on yours? The T Rex guy also says it is machined out of a solid piece of metal and it's not plumbing parts that are re-assembled. Is there any actual benefit to not using welded metal pipe, I can't imagine there would be? My forge is a two burner, and I really dont want to have to make another entire forge. Is the T Rex really that much hotter than regular NC burners? It doesn't sound like you think so. But I saw on the hybridburner website where they are saying that they have an induction ratio about 1/3 higher than other burners. It seems like this would make them a lot hotter. Anyway, if this burner doesn't turn out that much hotter, do you guys think I should try forced air?

Hi, I'm a machinist and a damascus knife maker, too. I was using the coke forges at my school to make my forge welds, but have since graduated, so no more access to them. Two years ago, I bought a new two burner forge from ebay, before I got into machining and realized I could have made it better and way cheaper. The guy I bought it from boasted how "easy" it was to forge weld with, however it has NC burners that really don't get it hot enough to do any kind of a decent weld at all, even at 20 psi. Does someone here use T-Rex burners? Can you tell me more about how they work? What pieces are involved, that sort of thing? Like I said before, I'm a machinist and am interested in designing something similar to use in my own forge. Because, the NC burners just don't cut it with making damascus, I get little spots in the middle of my billet where the weld didn't quite take. These spots later expand during the heat treat. Any help would be much appreciated, because I don't have the money to buy one of these burners myself. Does anybody know if hybridburners sells these to vendors? Or are they the only place you can buy one? Thanks, Justin