Mikey98118

Also, I would definitely want "Gasser" included in a glossary. One of the things I've missed in recent decades is the profusion of slang terms that used to make the trades more colorful. When I first went to work at Odd Shipyards (Todd Shipyards Seattle) in 1972 you got harassed if you asked for a tape measure; they liked to call it a "yo-yo"; that was back when they had strong enough springs to do that trick

Frosty, Discussion leads to general consent (hopefully), then agreed upon terms can be llisted, generally doing more to ease newbie understanding than confuse it. From your comments, I would expect lots of contributions from you, unless you disagree with the very idea of a glossary. If this were twenty years ago, I wouldn't bother, but all you need to do is see all the "definitions" being made up by manufacturers who write in terms their competition won't use to realize that, when it comes to "gassers" we are rapidly devolving into sales speak; not engineering terms. That doesn't hurt me or you, but what about all those novices? BTW, Olsen's book was my inspiration. How could such a completely different text have inspired me? His book is a classic exactly because it contains zero bullshit; just the opposite of most collage texts; I need to find what's become of my old copy...

So, without knowing anything more about ribbon burners than what I've read...an obvious advantage they have is exit flames of variable force. And why is this special? Because of a thing called buoyancy. Hot air (and combustion gases) rise. Some of us have already mentioned "hang time" for combustion gases; others have pointed out how tricky exhaust size can be. But, if you turn a ribbon burner upside down, the force of its flames can be varied against both factors and perfectly tuned to them. Obviously, any burner will increase in flame force as flame speed/size increases, but I suspect that force increase in NA burners is far less than flame size increase. From what I've read so far, only a fan-blown ribbon burner could be deliberately tuned to increase the force of a flame to balance against buoyancy and/or exhaust size without increasing flame size so much that you end up with a flamethrower instead of a forge...is this right or not?

Frosty, I was a pickup kind of guy for forty-six years; now I'm a Geo kind of guy. Seattle has smaller parking places all the time, and I can rent a pickup or have materials delivered for the occasional construction project. Like my buddy Dan said after his heart attack, "Superman doesn't live here anymore." I'd already had mine, and knew exactly what he meant. We both changed our life styles in order to miss such events thereafter; very liberating it is too; I now have time to make Formula One burners, but I think of the "T" burner as more like a Geo, and would be perfectly happy to drive one. I'm more interested in Formula One heating equipment...at present

"Complexstipated"? That deserves to be a real word. However, you know how much I love complexstpiations, so I'll try at least confusing him with some options; after all, you already gave him fair warning, Jerry. Some commercial forges are better than others; usually becuase of the burners they come with. And although there is no ultimately perfect shape, oval forges are probably the best shape among the available choices. IMO the best commercial forge is a Chili Forge; you can Google their web site: this product also features the best NA burner on the Market; a fifth generation jet-ejector tube burner (commonly called a Mikey burner by home casting enthusiasts; you can Google those too). So, just what are oval forges? Well, they are actually rectangular forge interiors trapped in an oval body (shell). So, why not build them in a box shaped shell? Some people do just that; the problem with such a shell is that it needs to sit directly on a support structure; not just any kind of table though it has to be a refractory surface with plenty of insulation because of heat gain, or else a steel sheet thick enough not to warp from heat gain. By that point you would be better off with a brick pile forge, since it wouldn't be any more trouble to build and is the only kind of forge that can vary its size and shape. You can find more information on brick pile forges in another thread on this forum. The point of oval exteriors is the same as that of tunnel forges (tube shaped structures); both kinds have round bottoms which invite ambient air to circulate beneath them, shedding heat gain, so that fairly short legs can separate them far enough above a supporting surface not to burn it up or warp it. You could sit the forge on a wooden or thin sheet metal work table with nothing more than a piece of cement board to protect it. But, inside the forge is a lot more available work area than you will find in a tunnel forge. Of course, there are times when you don't want to heat all that space, so internal barriers can be made with firebrick or high alumina kiln shelving backed by rigidized ceramic wool, with which to shrink that space; the beauty of such devices is that they are "add ons." You can make them at your leisure. The next consideration is forge size; it isn't just a matter of initial cost; the bigger the forge the more it will hold, but the bigger the forge the more it costs to heat. Most people automatically assume that "bigger is better"; an idea that has been carefully planted in our minds by advertisements all our lives, because the truth is that bigger costs more; a delicious idea from any huckster's viewpoint. Unless you have a specific use requiring a big forge, smaller is nearly always better; not least because, after you make that perfect forge you will start dreaming about while using the forge you bought or built, that first small forge will still get used quite often, but people don't want elephants as pets...

You need to fix your burner and point at more of an angle, to increase swirl in the combustion gases; this is done to increase the amount of time those heated gases remain within the forge. Next, you need to use high temperature mortar to smooth out the forge interior. Finally, you need to place a round high alumina kiln shelf in front of, but an inch or so away from the front opening with a fairly small center slot for feeding material through it. I would also recommend using a high emissivity coating to paint all interior surfaces, and the side of the kiln shelf that faces toward the forge. These changes should take your forge to yellow-white heat. The Larry Zoeller Forge website has some free tips on setting up a coffee-can forge that are pretty good, but don't forget the kiln shelf baffle plate; they are inexpensive in that size at pottery supply stores.

Joe, Frosty is right about the hair dryer, especially because a hair dryer is set up to blow air with FORCE, yet it is small. So far as I can see, the only tricky part about building a ribbon burner is choosing a fan with force. If there was ever a size and shape of existing forge that could get maximum benefit from a top mounted ribbon burner its yours.

Kozzy, Gas Burners for Forges, Furnaces, & Kilns is available through Amazon.com, where you can take an electronic peek inside of it. Pirated PDF downloads are available "free" on the Net, but watch your six on those sites; some sites are okay and others are definitely not. I don't feel disloyal to the publisher in mentioning this, since book sales have nearly doubled since it was pirated

Just when we all thought nobody was a bigger monomaniac than Dr. Frankenburner and his totally exhausting book on burners and heating equipment we find: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Temperature-Control-Blacksmith-Forge/dp/1449560105/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450036500&sr=1-5&keywords=gas+forge Where will it all end? Is nobody safe from these people?!?! Weren't hi/low gas switches complicated enough? Talk about "no rest for the wicked"!!!

Harry, Locksmithjoe (thread right below yours) seems to be tinkering with the same forge as yours. You guys ought to compare notes.

Joe. Isn't this the very same kind of forge as the rebuilt model in the thread right above yours? Before you enclose it's front like Harry did his, I would suggest installing an angle iron below the front opening, instead of an enclosing plate, and stacking firebrick in front of the opening, but NOT against the wall; leave space for exhaust gas to hit it and be deflected upward. This keeps you from being blasted by dragon's breath, while the gas heats the brick face, creating infrared energy, which bounces back into the forge interior (much more efficient than allowing it to escape with the exhaust gas). Brick also has the advantage that you can change the shape and size of the little opening you leave in it to poke your work through. When Harry enclosed the front of his forge, he made openings in its ends for the exhaust to exit through (after all, those are very large burners for such a small forge), which allows him to put long narrow pieces into it. You should do the same thing, but add exterior angle iron below the end openings too, so that they can be baffled with brick just like the front opening. Then, don't even try to run those burners full blast; you shouldn't need too anyway. You could refine the forge even further by employing kiln shelving backed by insulated firebrick on the outside of the forge, but realistically, there comes a point when we are trying to "make a silk purse out of a cow's ear"...in other words, just upgrade that forge minimally, and build a different forge if you want efficiency.

Good one, Thomas, And people without lathes could put together some kind of drilling fixture, so this method could be used smaller tholes in MIG tips. Hey Frosty; Got any tips for the rest of us on this?

Thanks Frosty, I love it when people get specific about this stuff; that is about the most reassuring thing we can do for people who are seriously considering building heating equipment for the first time, and the only way other "old hands" learn anything new. Wouldn't it be great if we all got together and contributed a bunch of technical terms, then collated them into a gas forge glossary for this site? I can't think of a more valuable aid for newbies trying to research their choices before building...think, for instance of how confusing it is when we write of burner ports, to people who've just managed to wrap their minds around tuyeres: Accelerator: Term for an elongated gas jet, emphasizing the advantage of exchanging gas pressure for kinetic energy when forming a high speed gas stream. Bernoulli's Principle: Burner port: A combination of steel tube on the outside of a forge or furnace, in line with a tunnel through internal refractory inside the equipment, through which a burner is placed, aimed, and sealed. Cage: An external metal support structure for multiple position furnace/forges. Ceramic Fiber: Coating: Colloidal: Frame: An external metal support structure for heating equipment with ceramic based shells (ex. cement board) or loose brick Rigidizer: Tuyere (French pronunciation: twee-yur) a tube or tunnel, though which air is blown into a forge or furnace. Shell: A metal outer surface that contains and supports a refractory interior, and upon which burner ports, legs, latches, hinges, etc can be mounted. Mounted: Sorry; I just couldn't resist :-)

Kozzy, If you really like that forge, than I would suggest being bolder and planning on replacing the bricks completely with a multiyaered floor, wall, and lid consisting of updated materials (see chapter six in my book, which you can find Pirated PDF copies of on the Net for free). Otherwise, I'd suggest you dump it for a more up to date design. That piece of equipment dates back to times when heating equipment materials were a lot greater expense than the fuels to run them; these days the opposite is true.

Latticino, If you have the time, you should join one of the casting hobby groups, and go through their old posts on the subject of multiple refractory layers. I agree that the flame impingement area needs greater care than the rest of a forge interior. And, so does the "burner block" that holds the burner, if it is wall mounted, rather than roof or floor mounted. Moving on, I just discovered that zirconium silicate slowly dissociates above 2800 F; once the silicate and zirconium are no longer locked together, crystalline change in the zirconium will break down the matrix of any refractory it's included in. So, it looks as if we are back to stabilized zirconia powder for tough hot-face coating mixtures. "If you have the time, you should join one of the casting hobby groups, and go through their old posts on the subject of multiple refractory layers." should have read " and go through their old posts on the subject of multiple refractory layers, since you show interest in the subject." For I meant the remark as encouragement; not criticism.

Latticino, It's a question of how high the temperature exposure is going to be. With hot-faces exposed to temperatures higher than 2800 F, you typically reach 2300 F on a 2" thick refractory layer's outer side (cold-face); too hot for ceramic fiber products, and that is when using Ka-O-lite 3000 a semi-insulating refractory. But the hot-face thickness of some kind of insulation filled brick would be much thinner with correspondingly higher cold-face temperatures, and much lower forge temperatures would turn ceramic fiber products to slag. This is why hobby casters go for Perlite/ refractory mixtures in their primary insulation layers; because the spongy refractory layer that remains after the Perlite melts down to slag is still capable of insulating a 2" thick layer well enough to protect an outer insulating layer sufficiently for ceramic fiber to last. Not that I'm completely satisfied with this scheme; a refractory sponge isn't going to be all that tough is it? But so far, I've got no better plan. Of course, it should go without saying that the outer layer of fiber would be rigidized, to give it some structural integrity.

MIG contact tip sizes are listed for the MIG wire size they are meant to feed. A .023" MIG contact tip actually has an orifice diameter of .031" BTW, theoretical is exactly right; that chart is showing the mathematically derived adiabatic temperature of an air-propane flame,and is wildly over optimistic. Air-acetylene flames are only rated at 3600 F!!!

Wayne, I agree with using commercial refractory products, whenever possible. What we are discussing is how to employ commercial refractories in order to build a product, which so far we cannot buy, in order to achieve an effect we want; a very different thing. We are also discussing how to make other products that aren't available to hobbyists, but only to OEM clients manufacturing high tech crucibles, etc. I would love to just buy this stuff, and someday that will be possible, but not at present. I have watched as cheapskates have tried to save a few bucks by lining their casting furnaces with home-brewed refractories for years on the casting hobby newsgroups, and laughed as heartily as anyone when they crashed and burned. I've also watched sensible people combine commercial products in unexpected ways quite successfully during those same years. Mixing Perlite with castable refractory in order to create a high temperature insulation, which cannot be purchased, has been done successfully by founders so many times that it has become a standard construction technique. This secondary high temperature insulating layer is then surrounded either with a ceramic fiber outer insulating layer (the easy way), or Perlite glued together with sodium silicate (water glass); the inexpensive way.

Steven, Frosty gave you the common sense answer; to put it another way, there are so many variables that any concise formula you want to cook up is going to be so riddled with them as to be worthless. No one is going to all that trouble to present something unworkable, which is why you will never find a general formula. Even the few "rules of thumb" are only beginning points.

Frosty states "This is exactly the same rule that governs Jet diameter but I'm not good at math to be able to calculate correct jet dia. so I just do it by trial and error and take notes." Trial and error with notes IS the best path to take with gas jet diameters, because, while how responsive a burner is to jet diameter in a given mixing tube size, jet diameter will make the difference. In some designs jet diameter is critical. Other designs are more forgiving, but the right size jet will prove itself best by and by.

Yeath, but I mith burning my lepth when I uthe it

One of the tricks hobby casters like is to mix refractory cement with Perlite, to make an insulating secondary layer. Perlite isn't good for more than 1900 F, but this doesn't matter once the refractory hardens, for as the Perlite melts down into a vitrified layer at the bottom of each little space in the refractory, it leaves an air pocket behind. This would make an excellent filler for a hollow refractory brick form. It wouldn't insulate as well as the commercial insulating firebricks, but would be much tougher, if painted with a high emissivity coating on the hot-face, it should equal them; it would make a good starting point, anyway.

Frosty, We may need to investigate making our own bricks. After all, insulating fire bricks aren't the only game in town. I will do some further thinking on it.

Frosty, Phosphoric acid, isn't used to treat zirconium oxide, but to glue it to heating surfaces. This makes a coating that is susceptible to damage on forge walls, but if you're making your own coating mixtures at home, such damage is also easily repaired. And, if you use zirconia "flour" the coating is far more effective than the commercial product. I would recommend this path to people who have fiber insulated forges, and also for cast refractory forges/furnaces. During my book research I found that separating ITC-100 with water gave a much better result than painting the "mud" on refractory surfaces, and said so. However I made no attempt to find a way around its use completely, until the price rose far into corporate greed range. It's not suitable for brick pile furnaces though; such a furnace needs a strengthening outer layer for the bricks. Zirconiium silicate is going to work better when mixed with a refractory coating on their hot-face sides. I would also recommend dipping the whole brick in a good tough semi-insulating refractory, such as Kaolite 3000 first, to make a tough surface coating all over the brick, and firing it. A person might decide to do this two or three times to get optimum results. Afterward, paintiing the hot-face side of the brick only with a high emissivity coating containing high-alumina refractory cement and zirconium silicate would be ideal...I think. But let all credit go to he or she who tries out the idea. So, why the hot-face only? zirconium silicate contains a lot of silicate, which just might tend to glue some of those bricks together at elevated temperatures; Kaolite 3000 won't. I know somebody would get pretty irritated, if I helped him glue his whole forge together permanently Hot glass workers use insulated outer baffles on their furnaces to get maximum benefit, but I only recommend exterior baffles made of high-alumina kiln shelves (painted on the hot-face with a high emissivity coating) because they are physically tough; they are also easy to shape and easy to mount, giving you the ability to have them raise and lower, and also to slide into a steel channel shaped holder for quick change out to other baffles. I don't think we are likely to find anything more convenient in front of a forge than that.

I believe this is the case. The air flow doesn't pass the jet lengthwise and largely intakes down stream from it so whatever turbulence the jet imparts is minimal. Frosty The Lucky. I agree; since the air doesn't pass along side the tip, tapering would be pointless; don't bother.