Mikey98118

I'm hoping that the photo will be something of a revelation to other folks, about how big differences don't always need big changes; looking forward to seeing the next photo.

You are more than welcome Square Nail. do weuns get to look too?

Nothing is obvious to an anxious mind. Take flame paths; the longer the better is a given. But, take a careful look at your forge: (1) Is your back wall closed, accept for a SMALL opening to occasionally pass long material through? Do you keep it closed when not in use? If not, you are shortening some of the flame's exit path, and wasting fuel. (2) No two burners have identical flames; this goes double for homemade burners. If you have two or more burners, are they positioned so that the richest burner is at the back of the forge, and the leaner burning is forward of it? If you have three burners, and one burner is burning rich, one neutral, and one lean, they should be positioned as; back wall, than rich, than neutral, than lean, and than exhaust opening. (3) A swirling flame path is a long flame path. But is isn't always possible to position your burner on a tangent. You may choose, for perfectly logical reasons to build a box forge; and their a lots of old box forges that you may decide to buy, and recondition. If you can't position the burner for a long flame path, try to produce a shorter flame. Multiple flame ceramic heads, such as found on ribbon burners, and Giberson style ceramic heads are the best choice for creating short hot flames. But many burners have a fast enough mixture flow to allow deliberate shortening the mixing tube, or mounting a radical flame nozzle, which will create a shorter brush flame. Nothing tried means nothing gained...

Looking at the one clear flame photo, I would make one last helpful change. Move the front burner, that has a lightly reducing flame to the back of the forge, and move the back burner that has a neutral flame to the front of the forge. This allows more distance for the secondary flame to burn off, and insures that the fuel that didn't burn, must pass in front of a neutral flame before it exits the forge. Better results all the way around for a small additional effort, yes?

Larry, I find myself underwhelmed...and that is just WRONG! It is important to get behind products that are investing in their customers safety. Recently, I even thought about looking for a source of asbestos, just to solve some technical problems; Maybe it's because I'm old. But there are a lot of young people, who still need to guard their health. Bravo, for doing something constructive about the future

thanks; every supplier we can come up with helps.

Morgan Crucible company's 2600 F rated insulating fire bricks make a good balance of endurance and fuel efficiency. A heat reflection coating should bring them completely up to snuff for holding up to flame impingement, while increasing fuel efficiency even further. Do not use foamed clay fire brick as primary insulation; they have nearly zero mechanical strength, and crumble from thermal cycling. Semi-insulating alumina fire bricks have much more strength, but as is true of refractories, not all 2600 bricks are the same. Morgan claims their bricks to be much more insulating than other brands, because they have more micro-pores, which better block heating by conduction. A good indication of a material’s ability to slow heat conduction is its weight. The average 2600 aluminum based refractory is 85 lbs. to the cubic foot; bricks made out of it weigh the same. Morgan’s 2600 bricks are aerated during construction, and weigh only 45 pounds to the cubic foot. I have been looking for a reasonably priced alternative to ceramic fiber board for years; This looks to be it. Alumina brick can be cut using ceramic rated cutoff disks in saws, and angle grinders, and drilled using carbide encrusted hole saws, and carbide tipped cement drilling bits.

The 1" thick version of these bricks make the perfect transition layer to place between a high alumina kiln shelf and a pillowing layer of ceramic fiber insulation, to protect it from being overheated by the shelf temperatures.

2600 semi-hard & semi-insulating fire brick "Thermal Ceramics, a division of the Morgan Crucible Co., England, has recently introduced a new product, K(R)-26 IFB. Historically, 2600F grade insulating firebrick have been relatively dense materials, generally produced by a pressing or wet compaction process. In 1998 Thermal Ceramics began extensive development efforts with the aim to produce a 2600F insulating firebrick using the company's unique casting process. The result of these efforts is the new K-26 IFB. Until now the advantages of the casting process -- more micro-porosity which improves thermal conductivity -- were not available in a 2600-degree brick. At a mean temperature of 2000F, the K-26 IFB performs equivalent to lower temperature IFB such as the K(R)-23 and the K(R)-25 on thermal conductivity value and substantially outperforms ceramic fiber blanket at temperatures higher than 2000F. And at a density of 40 lbs/ft(3), K-26 IFB is roughly equivalent to K-25 (2500) IFB." The company's website is located at http://www.thermalceramics.com Note: The only reason that this product will perform as well in ceramic fiber insulation at 2000 F is that most of the heat transfer at that temperature (and up) is by radiation; not by conduction. This means that only the portion of either product this can be applied to is the part that is at yellow incandescence. eBay source of 2600 insulating fire bricks: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1311.R1.TR6.TRC1.A0.H1.Xinsulating+f.TRS0&_nkw=insulating+fire+brick&_sacat=0 These bricks are semi-insulating, and be considered half-hard; they can stand up to thermal cycling without crumbling, and wont fracture from careful handling, but can be improved in mechanical strength, resistant to hot flux, and insulation value with a coating of zirconium silicate/Veegum homemade refractory For all you people who buy half bricks to save money and trouble; here is a much better choice (even without the coating).

You are between a brick and a hard shell Without dissing your forge, it boils down to a question of room. You need a tough hot-face on the one hand, and insulating qualities on the other; your forge just doesn't have the room to give enough insulation and maintain physically tough interior surfaces. So, compromise with a good tough semi-insulating hard refractory like Kast-O-lite 2600. Kayolite brand has a good variety of insulating and semi-insulating hard refractories, too; look them up. Building a shellacked wood form to cast your own brick floor in, is simple. You can buy either brand of refractory in small amounts from re-sellers (like Wayne on this very forum). Go to the Forges 101 thread, and read up about zirconia silicate homemade refractory and kiln wash, which will reflect heat back into the forge. You can buy the supplies at most pottery supply stores. You wont lose or gain any money going this rout, but you will save a whole lot of fuel, and gain a lot tougher forge.

Dead on. Home founders like to use them to check crucible contents for pouring temperature; some guys have set up their casting furnace with a small peep hole to run the ceramic sheiled thermocouple through, but it would be more useful to check for tempering temperatures; they consider the thermocouple to be just another consumable.

MonkeyForge, Feel free to add anything you care to on the subject of sintering. Please note that the author of the article in DigitalFire on making rirconium silicate refractories, talked about using batts to help dry his tile, and warned that the amount of water had to be kept to a minimum. Myfordboy has a video on YouTube, showing how he uses a hand operated vibrator to liquefy castable refractory, which contains very little water content, into a mold. I think vibration will be key to success in molding or casting these formulas. Good point; I will be more specific in future.This stuff can be used as both a thin heat reflective coating at 5% Veegum (or Bentonite clay) and as a 3/16" and thicker refractory at 3.5%; the difference being that the author stated that it becomes "sticky" with the higher percentage of plasticizer/binder. Sticky is a very desirable quality in a thin coating, but a real pain in a general refractory. Home founders like to build vibrating plates for sand screens to set on; the same scheme should be a simple method for vibrating small molds for casting tile, etc.

Wow; than the last three years have been chock full of progress! I owe all of mine to this forum; it is great to learn as much as we teach

We are both talking about the zirconium silicate/Veegum mixture, yes? I wouldn't bet on anything else to match up against Kast-O-lite 30 for toughness in the cold state.

It may well end up very tough at temperature, but more like an ordinary ceramic mug when cold. I would be comfortable with that. "I don't ask for much; I only want a touch, but you know it don't come easy..."

It's easy to tell that, Frosty. I will most likely post something quite obvious; bottom line is, the obvious frequently turns out to be the key factor to unlocking progress. Progress = exchanging Formula 1 burners and forges for properly hopped-up family rides. Personal progress = sneaking up on Frosty a bunch of times, and coaxing lots of people down to the deep end of the pool Nirvana = getting someone so excited about a new idea that he can't rest until he can jump all over it

I totally agree on the armoring; especially now that we have such a slick armor available (zirconium silicate & Veegum). But this only drives my desire to increase the performance of the insulation layer; greedy Mikey once it all, but will always accept more for now, and keep on looking for still more performance later

High temp ceramic fiber insulation for low cost So now that we have a superb homemade refractory hot-face available (zirconium silicate & Veegum), we need a break in the price of higher temperature backing insulation. How about doing a little extra work in return for a whole lot of savings? Enter phase two: Bulk ceramic fiber https://vod.ebay.com/vod/FetchOrderDetails?ViewPaymentStatus&purchaseOrderId=180000042145878

To me, it is just like any other control; a tuning opportunity on the one hand, and part of the learning curve on the other.

Larry, Once again I would like to invite you to take the conversation to a permanent thread; in this case Forges 101. I listed you in the Sources section of my book all those years ago, because where to to buy needed parts are just as important to people as any other how-to information. Not using the forum as a platform to advertise, doesn't extend to the point of pretending you don't exist. Why not follow Wayne's example, and thread a careful path?

I looked at their figures, and was impressed. We come to expect giant leaps forward; unfortunately, in ceramic blanket, those come at high prices and low availability. There is such a thing as 3000 F use rated blanket on the market, but who can afford it? This product is an affordable step forward. On the one hand, we stuff extra lengths in the blanket to take care of the expected 4% shrinkage in normal use. But shrinkage isn't the point of these figures; it is being used as a gauge of break down of the product, as the amorphous silicate portion of the fiber breaks down, do to crystal formation. So, what is really being plotted is product's life expectancy, when the forge is kept at welding temperatures. Thus that small improvement is an important one.

Glad to see ribbon burners get a permanent thread in time for their coming advancements to be logged here.

We all cycle through the same (irritating) lessons; I find that knowledge is great at building perspective, but any time we let our selves get sloppy, we make the same messes as the rawest newbie

For me, half the point of rigidizing is to provide better support behind a thin hot-face layer; a belt and suspenders take on the deal is wise.

The other use of a choke is to prevent hot exhaust from running up throw your burner after shutdown, if it is positioned vertical down, or at a vertical down angle.