Mikey98118

Timgunn, I like that idea; very practical way to vary secondary air intake.

I have always preferred to buy tools, rather than build them. Seventeen years ago, I started building burners, forges, and casting furnaces, because all the comment I'd heard from people who bought forges was only about their dissatisfaction with them. These days Chile Forge puts out a good product; One guy in England puts out a good product; that leaves a whole lot of unsatisfactory forges for sale...

It looks to me that Zoeller is asking $36 dollars for his regulator kit, while HiTemp wants $57 dollars; how is that cheaper?

How do you choose the right size of spacer ring? Using schedule #40 pipe, or its tubing equivalent, the spacer ring is the next size up from the pipe you are using as the burner mixing tube. The flame nozzle consists of the next larger pipe size from the spacer ring. You will probably need to do a little filing or power sanding to get the spacer ring to slide freely on the mixing tube, and a little more filing to get the flame nozzle to press-fit over the spacer ring. I would also recommend using stainless steel pipe or tubing for the flame nozzle; not mild steel.

Green Zombie, the following will sound harsh; I don't mean it that way, but...No, it is not working fantastically! I can tell this much from your description of the burner as "working great at first", after looking at your photos. The first photo shows a (probably 1/2" pipe size burner (not one inch, unless you have giant sized hands) with a reducer fitting that is too small, on a pipe that is a bit short). That pipe should be nine times the measured inside diameter of the pipe in length if you want proper fuel gas and air mixing. Your photo also shows the flame nozzle out of proper alignment with the mixing tube (pipe) axis; drill and tap three more holes to the rear of the existing three set screw holes, so that you can properly aim the flame nozzle.Also, I don't think you remembered to include a spacer ring at the rear of your flame nozzle; it will never work properly without one. this advice comes from the guy who invented all those updates to Riel burners that you're trying to employ. Your burner will be "running fantastic" when it produces mostly a single primary flame envelope, without a white combustion envelope behind it (just a clear space), with very little secondary flame, and no third flame envelope at all. Pipe call-out sizes are smaller than actual outside diameter; they are even smaller than actual inside diameters. Read the call-out sizes listed on the bins you choose your parts from; don't go by what you see.

There is nothing wrong with a Riel style burner, if you include the MIG tip modification, which ups its output quite a bit. There is also nothing wrong with a Frosty "T" burner, which is a lot easier to build. I would also recommend that you include a third layer of ceramic fiber, reducing your way overlarge forge enterior; trading it away for enhanced insulation performance; a win win trade off.

A Frosty "T" burner will be the easiest to build, but be warned that nothing larger than a 3/8" burner is likely to have sufficient turn down range to work well in such a small forge. You can find how-to text posted for my 1/4" and 3/8" burners somewhere in this forum. If you can get instructions from someone who has built a 3/8" "T" burner, that would be more convenient for you, as small Mikey burners would require you to buy a hand operated rotary tool.

Yes, the blacksmith group will certainly do him more good overall; however, when it comes to burners and heating equipment, the casting group will probably be more valuable to him. Of course, nothing prevents him from using both sources.

Way to small for a 34" burner; you would be much better off with ibe a 3/8" burner. You can find instructions for building them by following one of the posts that is tagged with an arrow that is labeled "Burner."

NO TAPER; the instant you put taper in a step nozzle is the instant you lose all its advantages. A tapered nozzle has very little ability to help tune a burner for best performance, becuase the amount of its overhang beyond the mixing tube does very little to change ithe internal shape of its opening. A tapered nozzle has the least ability to super-heat and form a secondary ignition source for the wave front; a taoered nozzle is a lot more work to construct. The only reason for employing a tapered nozzle is that the burner design has too weak a fuel/air mixture flow to support a step nozzle. If you correctly follow the MIG tip change I wrote for Ron Riel's burner, even one of them can successfully feed a stepped burner nozzle, so why on earth would you opt for a tapered type???

Ironhawk, My land line number is 206-722-8326 My URL is [email protected]

WayneCoe, Your dad was a smart man; if ever a pithy-grabber was spoke, that is one. It's also pretty important to know what goes where, and why, if we want to end up with a good enough piece of equipment; otherwise, we are simply trying to stumble through to the finish line on luck! The only exception to complete understanding is building on faith, based on a complete set of instructions. Frosty, Very few of us write well enough to hold the interest of the average reader. My first book was written for starving artists; people who had earned a bachelor of arts degree in fine arts from a typical American college; only to discover that they were never taught the skills needed to create first rate multimedia art, and who could never afford to buy the equipment; I wrote it for people who would be driven to pay close attention to its building instructions, and only bothered reciting the reasons why the equipment worked so well for any of them with left over curiosity after equipment construction. My family was thrilled that one of them was a published author, but none of these highly intelligent people could make it through more than a few pages of the text; this was because they had no interest in the subject. Driving interest trumps all other factors, but is seldom seen

The flame nozzle design is everything; EVERYTHING!!! All the other construction changes on all of my burner designs are meant to assist the right flame nozzle design to work at peak efficiency; that said, a mere tapered flame nozzle built from refractory can do almost as well as one of my stainless steel flame nozzles when fed from an older burner design; I fully expect the same improvement with one of my flame nozzles built from refractory. Hybrid stainless steel, refractory lined flame nozzles are the wave of the future for burners employed as hand torches, or in small equipment, and refractory burner blocks for brick pile forges.

Frozen Forge asks, "Mike, I recall from somewhere about putting a compression type spring that fits against the I.D. of the mixing tube to promote mixing and a swirl effect. Any thoughts?" Another good question; right to the point. Turbulence is what creates efficient propane and air mixing; you cannot create a stable air/propane flame without it. That said, there are many ways to create turbulence in a burner; some good and most of them bad. The difference comes from how much interference with laminar flow you create in order to accomplish good mixing. Most forms of turbulence are the equivalent of driving your car with the handbrake engaged. Swirling the fuel and air together is the least costly method for mixture flow speed. So, anything you put inside the mixing tube is going to be harmful to flow speed. the only device I've ever seen in oxy-fuel torches that works well is internal fins to create spin in the mixing chamber, or fins in the goose neck to reduce spin in the output flame; I would not use either in an air-fuel burner. BTW, an internal spring in a burner's mixing tube will interfere with the swirl effect; not promote it. I harp on about mixture flow speed, because high flow speed allows a more radical flame nozzle shape, which reduces mixture pressure in the flame nozzle two or three times that achieved in a typical tapered flame nozzle; this shape is easier to build and far more easily tuned than a tapered nozzle; it wil also support a much larger harder flame. Frosty is right about increasing the orifice diameter on the MIG tip; it's the only possible reason this burner design could run lean. BTW, nice work on that burner. where did you order the threaded stainless steel reducer from?

Frosty, Yes, IF YOU CAN GET COMPLETE COMBUSTION IN THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE DISTANCE (which requires a single wave envelope AKA wave front) slower velocity is best, because it gives more "hang time" for combustion products to transfer heat to the hot-face surface of your forge; this can be accomplished by deliberately turning down one of my burners in the T-D-C position or by building two smaller burners instead of a single larger burner. The major advantage of ribbon burners is short low velocity flames, so if hang time were the only criteria, they would win hands down; it's not. But, suppose someone is building a vertical forge or casting furnace; or suppose he/she is building a rotating forge/furnace. Then low velocity flames equal LESS hang-time when the equipment is in the vertical position Why is longer hang-time a desirable factor, but not the central factor? Because of radiant heat from equipment walls. Hang-time would be the trump card if combustion heat transference to the work was mainly accomplished by contact with super heated combustion products, but this just ain't so, above 1600 degrees; the hotter your furnnace the greater the percentage of heat transfer happens through radiation.

Every good rule has a possible exception, One friend of mine uses a top-dead-center position with his burner pointing straight down at the forge floor; it works beautifully for him, but he only heats up to 1/4" square stock with his burner turned down to the minimum pressure that will produce a single wave front neutral flame. this is as close to the slow flame performance of a ribbon burner as you're going to get with a jet-ejector burner design. I wouldn't even mention this exception if bean can forges hadn't been listed among his possible choices, for anything larger I use a tangential position with my burners (twenty degrees down from top-dead-center).

Ironhawk, I'm pretty Leary of inviting perfect strangers to visit at my home, but am perfectly willing to meet for coffee and get acquainted; also willing to provide on-site advice, and parts from the endless leftovers my burner experiments generate. My friends all belong to a local casting group that meets once a month; there is a meeting coming up soon; you could hardly make a better move than getting to know these guys. One of those friends, Dan, also built the five-gallon propane cylinder forge featured in my book, which he might be talked into bringing to the next meeting, so that you can see one operating.

My advice is to go to work on learning welding from your friend, while he's willing to teach you.

The difference used to be that hard firebricks were made of high heat resistant cast refractory formulas, and soft firebrick (AKA insulating firebrick) was made by including a foaming agent in the a castable refractory formula. As with so many other things, today there are many different choices of both kinds on the market. It is not only refractory mixes that come in 3000, 2800, 2600, 2300, and 2000 F ratings with equally varying degrees of insulating ability; bricks are made in those same ratings. Furthermore, today hard firebrick comes in many specialty varieties.

And to report evenhandedly, the overall effect of the flame differences between these two burners seems to be very good for clenceo's forge; this becomes obvious when looking at the exhausted gas, in the third photo (no slightest trace of blue exhaust flames); although this may well change after he controls the size of the forward opening with a brick stack close to the front of the forge, or a cut down internal baffle to shrink the opening's size; that will cause an increase in back pressure, which will, in turn, change burner performance.

I also noticed that, while the back flame is well aimed, the forward flame (the best one) is tilted a little off-center; that could make the difference between them. It's good that you like to tinker and are interested by tuning. If there was one single major failure I spotted in my readers, time and again it was an unwillingness to put forth a little extra effort and learn how to tune their own burners! But tuning isn't just about performance; learning to tune a burner is necessary for anyone who wishes to learn anything about designing and/or operating burners. I got that backwards; it's the back flame that looks to be slithtly canted. No; it IS the forward flame that is tilted slightly off-center. Obviously, a cup of coffee is way overdue

There are different ways to improve your view, while protecting your eyes from glare. number #3 half lenses with clear tops is a common method for blacksmiths. Hot glass artists (who are exposed to a lot more furnace glare, and also need to accurately judge heat by color) Mostly depend on neodymium glasses, which aren't cheap, but are quite effective.

What a perfect question, Frozenforge. Mixture feed speed,and amount of drop in mixture pressure in the flame nozzle or burner block area, are both factors which contribute to high flame speeds...or fail to do so. One very clear indicator for whether or not you've built a high speed burner is how far incoming fuel gas pressure can be turned up. I rated the burners in my first book at a maximum of thirty PSI, but I tested every one of them for stable flame production at sixty PSI, and deliberately under rated the burners to maintain a high margin of safety for readers (whom I knew would tend not to build the burners EXACTLY as instructed). Riel burners are not high speed burners, unless the MIG tip modification is added. The only way I can believe clenceo achieved that perfect forward flame is by nestling his burner in a burner block, instead of employing a stainless steel tapered nozzle. If he replaced the side hole with an .030" MIG contact tip he could achieve it on the back flame too.

They sell a good regulator at a reasonable price; Fisher brand, if I remember correctly.

CAE, Don't use hard firebrick for the forge floor, 3/4" or even 1" thick high alumina kiln shelving is utterly superior to fire brick in strength, resistance to super heated fluxes, and blocking heat transfer. The average fire brick is roughly equivalent fire clay in heat transfer rates; high alumina is up to seven times more resistant to heat transfer. The only refractory substance more resistant to heat transfer is zirconium oxide. A kiln shelf can be cut long enough to extend through both ends of a steel forge shell, and because it is designed to carry heavy loads of pottery at very high heat (rated to support your load at 3000 F). Becuase it takes so little space, there is plenty of room between it and the shell to add ceramic blanket. which is quite springy before it "takes a set" after a few heat cycles. By cutting a 1/8" oversize rectangular slot for the shelf, you can stuff a lot of ceramic blanket under it, making a very good additional support for the forge floor, along its entire length; what more could you want for about $23 at your local pottery supply? No; rigidizer is not anything like Plistex. Rigidizer is colloidal silica (AKA fumed silica). It penetrates through the ceramic blanket to strengthen it. Plistex is a hard finish coating, which is one way to seal the ceramic blanket and provide a smooth finish layer on which to paint a high-missive coating (AKA (IR reflector"). while Plistex is claimed to be an" effective IR reflector," any high-alumina castable refractory can match it.