Mikey98118

I have considered Metrikote without any final judgment, for years. However, your last two photos have convinced me of its complete efficacy. I would be pleased to see them, and your opinion on Metrikote, placed in the Burners 101 thread, where all the other people who are wondering what would make an excellent low-cost heat reflective seal coating for ceramic wool tthey use.

Yes, there should be a market. Whether or not you want to bother... The smaller the jet opening the smaller the time needed for propane to plug it up, so instructions on how to clean gas jets of a few thousandths of an inch would need to be included. Also, very small jets require quite high fuel pressures, due to friction. The kind of area weed burner that uses 16 oz. propane canisters require full canister pressures to run; that is as much as 135 PSI. I would expect that they would not run below 60 PSI (this is only a guess). Propane, as it is marketed, is not a very clean fuel. Butane that is used in blue flame lighters, for instance, used to be as much as triple refined. Today triple refining is considered a minimum, while some of this fuel is now refined up to fifteen times. While especially crude propane is not the rule, at openings as small as .030" I have had to clean tar balls out of MIG tips for a friend who was using ''bargain" fuel. It only took three 16 oz. propane canisters to completely plug my weed torch, which as a very small jet bore.

Drilling holes and cutting capillary tubes can both cause internal burrs and scratches to interfere with the smooth bore needed to produce a long volume of gas from gas jets. The answer to this problem is the use of a set of torch tip cleaners to remove them.

Drilling holes and cutting capillary tubes can both cause internal burrs and scratches to interfere with the smooth bore needed to produce a long volume of gas from gas jets. The answer to this problem is the use of a set of torch tip cleaners to remove them.

Just so. I like to use a set of torch tip cleaners inside the bore to ensure there are no burrs in drilled holes or in cut capillary tubes, to avoid that.

I think that Frosty meant your forge is hot enough to make an outstanding example. The heat can always be reduced, but a cold forge is the usual first effort we see here; congratulations

Yes, that is what I am speaking of. All of your questions are answered in that discussion; go back enough pages to read it all, including the references to the original article in Digitalfire that it came from.

For one thing, your mixing tube is too short; it is supposed to by nine times the pipes ACTUAL inside diameter. Actual inside diameters of pipe are always larger than its call-out size. Nine diameters between the reducer and the end of the pipe. Worse is your flame nozzle; it has no taper and it has no spacer ring; it needs one or the other.

Without even going into problems with your burner, you hit it in one. Butane simply doesn't run with sufficient fuel pressure when running to support a naturally aspirated burner.

In very small diameter tubing, friction losses rapidly mount up; this is not a problem, but a solution to not finding exactly the best inside diameter available for the desired burner size. For instance, in a 3/8" Mikey burner it allowed me to use .020" inside diameter stainless steel heavy wall capillary tube and get the burner perfectly tuned by sanding the tube down to about 9/6" length inside the end cap. I say about 9/16" because I started out at 5/8" and hand sanded down a few thousandths at a time until the burner tests gave me a perfect flame. I also tried heavy wall brass capillary tube in .022"; it never got as good a flame, although I expected it to do much better than it did. Experience only goes so far, and then experiment needs to settle matters.

Back about six pages is a discussion of a homemade heat reflecting seal coat, which I would recommend hands down over ITC-100; it costs a whole lot less too. While I fully back silicate rigidizer for ceramic blanket, I'm less sure about its efficacy on ceramic board. Two 3/4" T burners should handle the job. Proper soft flames generally take less distance than hard flames to finish combustion; I recommend Frosty's burners over my own in square forges for that reason.

There is such a thing as K28 insulating firebricks; they are highly insulating, will help solve the mechanical problems with your outside bricks, so light that shipping is cheap, (as is the price of the bricks), and good for 500 higher degrees than Kaowool. BUT they have a very open cell structure, so you will want to give the inside of the forge a refractory seal coat from Wayne. You can buy the bricks on eBay.

A good quality paper respirator, which means that is has a built-in exit valve, two elastic strings, and an aluminum strip over the nose area is capable of stopping hazardous dust from ceramics.

That, sure enough, looks like some sort of "T" burner, which is Frosty's business.

Listen to Lattisino's advise. Also, rotating the forge ninety degrees will put the long side of the forge in line with your burners, as it should be.

Yes, that is true. They can also be tamped into position in a friction fit, and that's where they stay too. I like to cut the tube a little long, and then hand sand it shorter until it runs perfectly in a given burner; this goes much faster than it sounds because the tube has a thin wall. There is a learning curve that gives people anxiety only until they get into doing this once or twice; then how easy it actually calms them right down. I like #400 grit paper and a little spit, combined with a circular motion.

You have to use hypodermic tube to get inside diameters like 028" very easily; the tube is then pushed into a MIG contact tip with the right size hole, or one that has been drilled out to the hypodermic tube's outside diameter. There are other ways of course, such as brass capillary tube, but they come and go in the marketplace.

We all just want you to have the information you need; speaking of which I would like to point out that ALL the burner designs recommended in the sticky threads section of this forum will work just dandy in a forge. You don't need to build one of mine to get satisfactory results.

High yellow should be plenty of heat in the work to suit anyone wanting to weld; that would be about 2300 F. 2500 F is white hot; more than is needed. Note that what color of incandescence you see depends on the light level in your work area; therefore, you need an area lite burning in tthis area before beginning to judge work temperatures by incandescence.

High EDE, The standard .030" orifice diameter found in contact tips for .023" welding wire is just a little oversize for half-inch burners. So .028" inside diameter tube would be perfect, although .026" tube should work by shortening the tube more than the length used for 028" inside diameter tube. Even the larger tube must be shortened from the standard 1-1/2" long MIG tips; this is needed to reduce friction losses in the smaller tube diameters. The friction I am referring to is caused by gas molecules bumping into each other in the confined spaces of these tube diameters; it has nothing to do with the smoothness of the tube walls. Any roughness of the wall would only add to the friction.

Added input air in burners Industrial blowers are used in fan-blown burners that are intended to produce positive flame pressure; these are used to overcome backpressure in some kinds of heating equipment and/or burners, such as some ribbon burner designs. A much smaller amount of added air pressure is an easy way to bring weak linear burners up to snuff. How much is about the same amount as an ordinary breath; this can be provided by the average computer fan. Anything beyond this well end up requiring burner changes to bleed off the excess kinetic energy, less the winds generated should blow out the burner's flame. How big a computer fan? Big enough to match the large end of the burner's air opening; doing this will tend to give the right amount of added air; not too large or too small. You can use either standard bladed box type fans or squirrel cage fans for the purpose of pushing air into a reducer fitting or cone-shaped air opening. Avoid fans with impeller blades; they create a completely different effect, which requires special handling and can create a serious hazard if handled improperly.

Optical pyrometers have many around for many decades and are considered the best way to judge very high temperatures accurately; lots of expense and/or work learning how to use them properly. On the other hand, it generally takes about 2700 F of continual forge temperature to melt steel; if that isn't a fancy enough temperature indicator for someone, perhaps a little overwork and expense would help them appreciate common sense better.

Yes, you need to do some tweaking. I suggest you start with page one and read clear through the Burners 101 thread on this forum. It's all very nice to design your own burner, but it helps out a lot to have some idea what you're doing.

He is a bonehead, but it isn't just insurance companies who are pressing acetylene toward the brink; its production leaves messes that don't sit well with organizations like the EPA. When the last MAPP line switched over to propylene fuel gas in 2008 (it only had a minor percentage of acetylene in it) I heard the bell tolling. I've been around long enough to see enough boneheads get together and shout down the voice of reason repeatedly.

No. The Kast-O-lite refractory constitutes a seal coat for the ceramic insulation (((among other things). It is to keep water content from being trapped as the steam between the seal coat and steel container that you need a weep hole. And yes, the existing threaded hole will probably do just fine.