Mikey98118

Finally; a worthwhile homemade refractory formula I downloaded the following formula from the Digitalfire websilte; it would seem to be the ultimate low tech homemade tough refractory formula for hot-face armor cladding, and should provide a very high degree of insulation between heat sources and fragile ceramic fiber insulation. “zircopax kiln shelf: It is 5 mm thick (compared to the 17mm of the cordierite one). It weighs 650 grams (vs. 1700 grams). It will perform at any temperature that any kiln that I have will generate and far in excess of that. It is made from a plastic body having the recipe 80% Zircopax Plus, 16.5% 60-80 Molochite grog and 3.5% Veegum T. The body is plastic and easy to roll and had 4.2% drying shrinkage at 15.3% water. The shelf warped slightly during drying, so care is needed. First-firing at cone 4 yielded a firing shrinkage of 1%). Notice that cone on the shelf: It is not stuck so no kiln wash is needed! Zircopax is super refractory! It is held together by sinter bonding, so the higher the temperature you can fire to the stronger it will be.”

Handy & Harmon's Brazing Book Online http://www.pipeweldrig.com/files/weld/Brazing book .pdf

Sweat on adapters (tubing with a flare on it) can be found online for HVAC applications: https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&site=&source=hp&q=flare+fittings+hvac&oq=flare+fittings&gs_l=hp.1.1.0l10.2805.7020.0.12655.15.13.0.0.0.0.273.1394.9j3j1.13.0....0...1.1.64.hp..2.13.1388.0..46j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i20k1j0i46k1.9v7LWQWq94c

Don't overlook casting fans; there are a few in B.C who are quite good with burners, and casting furnaces aren't all that different from tunnel forges..

Use some of that firebrick to close down the ends until the internal temperature comes up enough to bring your work to yellow incandescence. Can't give you anymore advice without a working photo.

I am a notorious perfectionist picky butt. And Burners 101 needs to be saved from my druthers. Workable burners are the goal; that is one. I would be pleased to see it on that thread

Sweat on adapters (tubing with a flare on it) can be found online for HVAC applications

The third photo show an acceptable flame for use in a forge; it is a neutral flame, with an acceptably small secondary flame.

No; I had a second stroke instead. I am just getting back into condition to build new burners, but will probably not bother with that experiment. There is just too little call for NA burners using natural gas. After you get through cutting a ditch, and laying all the steel pipe, why not make a fan-powered ribbon burner instead? It's a question of what is possible isn't necessarily practical. Okay, I am assuming that the gas pipe must be extended from a kitchen out to an unattached garage. A house with an attached garage probably has gas already plumbed to the garage. On the other hand, I would never consider running homemade gas equipment, or doing any other kind of hot work, including welding, in an attached garage, for the same reason I wouldn't consider doing it in any other part of a home.

It couldn't hurt. Brazing is NOT mysterious! Over the last sixty odd years, the steady pressure that advances in welding technology placed on manufacturers of brazing products, have forced them to fight back with ever better fluxes and joining alloys. At the same time advances in materials science have allowed trace elements to be extracted from metal ores more perfectly than ever before, and then to become available to be redistributed in other metals, so that materials, which could not be brazed in the past, can now be brazed with relative ease by modern joining alloys. The only impediment to brazing as he poor man's answer to “TIG” welding, comes from the mistaken impression that the subject is a mystery; the last generation kept it as mysterious as possible, as so many other subjects were. And like other subjects, a cloak of mystery still surrounds it. But, nowadays that is due to simple ignorance. Manufacturers are trying hard to reach out, and make the average guy understand brazing to be a straightforward process, which does requires proper preparation of the parts, but negligible skill. Take for instance the task of plumbing your gas equipment. You have a choice of fittings to choose from. Compression fittings hardly ever maintain a seal on gas connections. Flare fittings work when done by someone who is practiced in making them, and has the right tools. Otherwise, they are a crap-shoot. If you look at a flare fitting and compare it to a POL fitting, you find that they both form the same type of joint, except that the POL fitting is a machined brass part, with a much larger mating surface, which was developed to be dependable under high pressure and sever conditions, while copper flare fittings were designed for low pressure water joints. Nevertheless, working with copper refrigeration tube is the fast and easy way to plumb forges—unless something goes wrong. POL fittings are set up for pipe connections and fuel hose, and have to by cut and fit for use in copper tube; that will also involve silver brazing some joints. You may be making an assumption. Namely that silver brazing is hard or needs something you don't have; this is wrong. There are three main types of silver brazing; all of them are easy, but two of them have special requirements. (1) Standard silver brazing alloys are all good for use with brass, copper, and mild steel alloys. (2) Phos-copper rods, some of which include silver, are good on brass and copper alloys; they are self fluxing on copper, but need flux on brass; they can be used to "sweat" hidden joints and/or to form fillet beads (similar to welding) on open joints. Phos-copper cannot be used on ferrous metals, as it "poisons them" creating cracks. Phos-copper is the surest, and cheapest way, to braze brass and copper parts, BUT, you MUST follow the package directions about cleaning the parts afterward; the higher temperatures this alloy requires (compared with silver braze) creates scale on and INSIDE the parts, which must be removed, or it may eventually break lose, and clog your gas jet. (3) Stainless steel parts require a minimum of 50% percent silver content in the joining alloy, and special (highly active) flux; they are also the best alloys for wetting metal surfaces, because of that same high silver content. This means that by paying a little more for high silver content brazing alloys, other metals than stainless steel becomes easier to braze too. Silver brazing merely requires the correct preparation of the joint and the right rod and flux for the alloy you are joining. You can find directions for sliver brazing stainless steel in Burners 101. You can also find endless tutorials on the various types of brazing online. You already have the perfect heating tool for silver brazing; your burner. So, there is no reason to feel intimidated. Your plumbing choices boil down to what technique you will feel most comfortable with. POL fittings can be purchased online and through a welding supply store; not a hardware store. Harris white stainless steel brazing flux can be purchased online, or maybe at your welding supply store (they tend to favor one brand over another). There are also black flux available but they require higher temperatures, which is no disadvantage in brazing stainless steel, but will cause scale on copper and brass alloys. Also, Harris white stainless steel flux, is enough less active than the flack flux that it can be used on stainless steel capillary tube, without danger of eating through the tube wall; that may become important to you, if you keep playing with burners. Rio Grande online has the best silver braze prices I have run across so far. Two things to keep in mind are: The higher the silver content the better the alloy will "wet" part surfaces; the lower its melting range the less scale that can be created. But suppose you really want to use flare fittings, even though you are having problems with them. In some areas copper flare fittings must be made by a certified plumber, in order to comply with local building codes; and because of that, you can purchase them as fittings from some plumbing stores. Of course you will still want to silver braze them in place, for safety; these are gas fittings—not water pipe.

To begin with, those look like insulating fire brick, BUT, obviously not the standard 2300 F overly friable (crumbling) variety, which cannot withstand thermal cycling; possibly, it is 2600 F semi hard insulating fire brick? This makes a huge difference, because the later variety is worth coating with Kast-O-lite 30 hard castable refractory, and then with a heat reflective coating. You can buy the refractory and heat reflective coating in small quantities from Wayne; a member here. If you are going to continue burning propylene, you should consider buying it in an industrial cylinder from a welding supply store Also, you could get just as much heat from common cheap propane, if you switched out your canister-mount air-fuel hand torch for a 1/2" "T" burner in a sealed burner port. I personally like your torch holding clamp, but placing the brick in drilled angles, and employing tubing for burner ports are a lot SAFER way to go. I hope you simply take this critique as helpful advise, and not as hostility to your forge choice. What are often called Two Brick forges around here, are a popular idea, which I would rather support, then drub.

I am talking about lightly filtered safety glasses; not welding lenses. I did already state that glassblowers glasses are pricey. Dydimium is only one of a number of special glasses that artists doing hot work, including hot glass, use. They are all expensive, and are most easily found by doing a word search using "glassblower's spectacles." I believe half filter (top and half bottom) lenses, along with Shott clear I.R. filtering lenses, were just as popular as dydimium when I was looking into the subject a decade ago. Who knows how much there is out there now.However, shade #2 safety glasses are still cheap and easy, and so is a green LED flood light. Still, I am more interested in providing choices than pushing people to do one thing or another.

To shade or not "What kind and specific type of shaded safety glasses do you recommend?" This question comes up more with casters and hot glass workers, but if you have a very hot running forge, it may cross your mind. Safety glasses lower visible light (glare) and UV. With the single exception of oxy-hydrogen flames, which have no carbon atoms to absorb the UV being generated, It takes an electric arc or a minimum 6000 F flame temperature to create a UV hazard. You are much better off looking for a lite shade of welder's safety glasses, or if you feel rich, glass blowers glasses; both kinds reduce glare and infra red, which this work does generate. Unless you want to trick up your own safety glasses, you won't find one with a lighter shade than 2. So, how do you avoid glare, and maintain a good view of the work? No matter what kind of shades you employ, they all have one thing in common: from welders goggles to sun shades, they are formulated to admit more green light, than every other part of the spectrum combined. LED lights put out all of their energy in vary narrow color bands, so a green LED light shining down on your anvil will give a very nice view for minor wattage, and no heat gain. Also for very minor money.

How to update the hole in a a refractory or brick wall, if you neglected to build a proper burner port The easiest way to build a burner port into an existing furnace or forge, is to use a pipe or tube that will fit snugly into the burner hole, and cut slits down the length of the pipe or tube, for the distance that it is inserted within the refractory. This will prevent the metal from cracking hard refractory or fire brick, as it expands. The outside portion of the tube contains six thumbscrews to support and aim the burner, and a washer that can be used to control the flow of secondary air into the furnace.

Ugh! I don't even want to comment on that; point taken!

Please listen to Frosty. You don't even know what the questions are yet.

Frosty, talk a closer look at his 'flare'.

that is probably correct, as far as it goes. The question is how much hotter? An observable amount, but probably not enough hotter to justify the price difference. Also, the Plistex makes a real contribution to the physical toughness of the of the ceramic blanket; enough so that, when combined with a thorough rigidizing, I would choose the combination overall,instead of a refractory hot layer in the typical tube or oval forge. I'm kind of surprise that Wayne isn't offering fumed silica already, since it is so lite to ship, and goes so well with Plistex...

Leaks in flare fittings are so common that some areas require a certified plumber to do any flare fittings if you want to meet code. Fortunately the cause and answers for the problem are both straight forward. The usual cause is a very poor quality flaring tool, which leaves gouge marks on the soft copper. The tool's face should be dressed. Small enough imperfections on the copper can be buffed out with jewelers compound. Both flare and compression fittings can develop leaks and cracks,if the the copper tubing is stressed. Of more concern is that many areas have codes that only allow one kind of fitting, or the other. However, regular fuel gas fittings are available through welding supply stores, and online; they can be threaded and/or brazed in place, making an end run around the problem, if you can't solve it any other way. That depends on how high their incoming gas pressures are turned up. I can tell you that they are one of the two hottest commercial burners out there. They are the hottest commercial burner that you can buy in a variety of sizes. The other burner is only for sale in 1" size, from Chili Forge.

The main limiter is the small size of drill bits, etc. Small work has its own frustrations; not least that the smaller the hole the the more magnified damage from a burr or other imperfection becomes. Still, there are answers for everything, with enough care and patience. I like to keep bringing the subject up from time to time, so that new people can speak up. Watch repair tools turned out to be quite a revelation already.

Ya know, usually people who want to "do it their way" make their own forge to do it their way in; just a thought...

Picking a burner for your forge, or casting furnace, is like picking out a pair of shoes. You don't play basketball in slippers, or fell trees in tennis shoes. There is no such thing as the perfect burner, because all of them have characteristics that go best with different designs of heating equipment. On the other hand, some burners are like a comfortable old pair of grandpa's boots, which the old geezer refuses to change, even though they're falling apart!

Once you get the burner dialed in, it will produce a stiletto shaped flame within your forge. The color concerned me until I realized that the flame only appeared purple, because it its blue was caught by the camera over an orange background. But how hot the forge is getting after two minutes tells me that you don't have a real problem with that burner; just a dissatisfaction

the saying is a contraction of "fuel rich," while a flame with too much air is usually called "lean."

Secondary Air: Merely Bad or outright awful? Even properly calibrated neutral flames in oxyacetylene torches produce secondary flames, so it is hardly a wonder that most air-propane burners do too. Over the last twenty years, ever more burners were designed to produce ever smaller secondary flames, and a very few burners don't need to produce any secondary flames at all. Without getting deep into burner theory, the one central fact about secondary flames, which you need to know, is that they must combine with ambient air to burn; that means that the higher the amount of your burner's fuel consumed in secondary flames the more secondary air is needed in your forge. Forget the idea that secondary air can slip into the forge from the exhaust opening; that simply isn't going to happen in a well regulated forge. The secondary air your burner needs comes into the forge through the same port your burner does; it is induced into the forge by the flame, just as primary air is induced into the burner by the gas jet in any naturally aspirated design. But even if you have a fan-blown burner, it's flame can induce secondary air into the forge, if the burner port isn't sealed. At best, secondary air is a necessary evil. Excessive secondary air, is where "outright awful" comes into the picture. Burners with little or no secondary flames, tend to be high speed burners with very hard flames. Frosty's "T" is the only exception to the rule thus far. Hard flames also induce more secondary air than soft flames. Burners with hard flames induce so much secondary air through the typical burner port that sealing them with ceramic wool can jump internal temperatures up 20%, or allow you to cut your fuel consumption back that much. Ironically old burner designs need more secondary air on the one hand, while their soft flames induce less of it on the other, so in the past, sealing burner ports wasn't practiced.