RainsFire

yes well, theres the dillema.. even your design will have a hot spot near the rear of the furnace.. that fire brick will absorb alot of the heat, and the entry (front) will be a considerable ammount cooler. really, you need more than one burner to disperse the heat more evenly. As you've said, you do not want to heat with the flame, but it is nearly un-avoidable with this sort of system. If you had a seperate air heating furnace that circulated the heat through the box at high temps, thats different.. but highly un-efficient, and you could just as easily be using salts.. seriously check out Don foggs.. I'll root around for the picture.

Whats the danger behind polishing? I find that there is never a reason to go directly against an edge, which is ultimately the only thing that can catch on a blade and send it into your boot or through your hand. If you are always polishing with the bevel or any abrupt edge facing away from the wheel, what can go wrong? I need to get a good polishing setup.. doing it by hand is...enlightening and all, but a quick buff for a christmass blade would be nice.

what for? kaolwool has always worked wonders, and most of my gass furnaces are lined in it. cut it extra long, and pack it in tight.. If you plan on using it in a welding furnace, coat it in a masonary refractory to avoid melting it from the flux and molten steel. merry christmas!

exactly what I was thinking^^ I have a feeling he would just lay the kaowool in place to be held down by the refractory(which you might want to do without if possible). Refractories are usually more just as a protection from flux, and I have found kaolwool to distribute and achieve heat faster than firebrick and satanite refractory. cool stuff man. you might also want multiple burners too..I dont know how you would engineer that, but ya.. more heat disperesed.

cool, guess someone else was thinking along the same lines. yep, for material removal I just used whatever I had on hand.. we are also into working with ceramic clay's so we have all those tools, including an elongated razorblade type thing I used for acchieving flat "grinds" I have a picture of the little pattern'd clay blade I made that I'll post up if I ever find the sneaky cord.. I just realized you can do exact calculations for making a blade down to the very fraction of an inch for calculating waste, expansion, end deminsions of said blade style per ammount of clay.. ect. and ya I've been messing with it for a while longer. It'd be cool to be able to show somone a baked finished billet of said pattern so they could see either for reference or some other purpose how the blade would look when completed. you could set up several example peices with different patterns purely for your own reference as well. the possibilities are really fairly endless. cool stuff.. -Merry christmas eve yall!

like what?

heh fellas, I was just looking through the new blueprints and noticed the clay one..and remembered something my mother does for fun. Using polymer clay she would make "mosaic" patterns, following me? There are dozens of tutorials and sites with step by step instructions on how to get these delicate patterns, and the clay because it is wax or poloymer based never dries up. last night I was experimenting with two different shades of grey (alloy's of steel) and got a nice latter pattern, and experimented with some various other basic patterns. what I'm getting at is this is a great way to model damascus steels without filling up a scrap bin.. to the point of if you end up with a crappy pattern, you can knead it together until it becomes "homogenous" (all the same color) and use it with another different shade. so ya, good times.. have fun, and maybe someone wants to make this a blueprint some time.

seems kinda deep with alot of wasted space, unless the blade is proportionate to a smaller blade.. but I'm assuming it is a full length-28in +/- so ya.. Don-fogg has a controlled propane heat treating furnace, but I cant remember what it looked like. wouldn't the blueprint for the tube furnace or whatever it was where the burner blasted down the length of the forge instead of through the side work relatively well also? anyway, nice rough design!

Our shop has these really nice glasses that are treated to block out some of the flash, and are tinted slightly.. they obviously won't protect you from staring straight at even an oxy acetelyn flame for an extended ammount of time, but they do cut down on accidental flash burns.

I dont understand, if this was in the blueprints why did you re-post it? thanks for the repeat, because I missed the darn things timezone issues.. bah. but ya. I've used clay before too, and to reasonable success.. sometimes I even fire the finished model for reference.

xxxx.. powers going.. and our seasonal pond (typically 20ft across) is now large enough to sail a catamaran in..which is about 16ft long.. I use ".." to emphasize, lol. not really.. just habit.. ugh..

What are you guy's doing to stay warm? Here at least in oregon we are having a "record" storm.. with winds on the coast supposedly reaching 120mph. I left a trashcan out in our backyard and it has filled to the brim with rain water.. and I just finished scraping the oakleaves from our rain gutter so the same thing doesnt happen to our padio.. I tried to smith for a little while the other night, and ran out of propane.. so I lit up my charcoal furnace.. only to notice that I was being rained on, sideways.. (I work in a lean-to..) The river that run's through our place under our bridge that is usually a good 15ft above the water level is now 2-4feet.. I may not be leaving tomorrow so ya, I've pretty much given up on getting anything done for now.. anyone else feeling it? I just watched a full sized oak snag drift past our house.. I'm getting a little worried now..

erm, gaff fishing? isn't that considered poaching? I guess maybe he's just using one to land the fish he has caught by conventional "legal" methods.. anyway, I've done some work in stainless and have had it crumble.. crack, and work.. so I guess like Frosty said, get the right alloy. you could also just plasma cut out a hook shape in some .25in bar and grind it to shape.. no hot work involved.

What about rambo or whatever it was.. rocky? I'm not so good with the classics.. but Rocky Balboa was banging away on a knife he was making.. quenching it and so on.. kinda funny.

well xxxx, I smith bolts of lightning.. We dont have a whole lot of lightning storms in our little canyon.. and no, were not grounded.. good point though, I can imagine that an anvil might collect some serious energy..

ha, I wasn't worried. sorry you haven't felt super well. did I send the shipping money ever? I guess I cant remember correctly either.. thanks a lot!!

hehehe.. pun time.. was it an "iron" cross?

might be heat stroke or repeated hammering.. sometimes if I work to long I get a little dehydrated and get this crazy cramp thing going on.. but I dunno, might be the fumes.. might be anything.

in prison?.. sounds like a shank to me.. I think he is asking what kind of style of blade would be easiest to make.. and I would have to say, a flat groound double beveled 2.5in hunter with a cord handle. heat treated with a torch, and toaster oven..

I have a blade that I am really quite proud of that I would like truly critiqued.. I havent gotten a chance to take some photo's yet.. and probably will this weekend when it is finished, and has a grip..

Ya, I guess I wasn't thinking super clearly last night.. as I've said.. dumb idea.

I guess this isn't a very appealing idea is it? I would really like to hear someones opinion on it though..

wow, very cool. saddly files dont work right for me I use the left handed, so the teeth do not cut as easily. very cool, keep it up!

dupe dupe dupe think its a word..

:o rude rude rude? I feel like this might be repeating.. I have to keep going back and checking.