Buzzkill

You can always try what you have now and pick up the specified T when you get a chance. When you get the "right" one it's just drilling and tapping a hole to replace what you have. Even if the performance isn't perfect, the dimensions of the burner will be the same and you'll already have the mig tip/propane fitting assembly done so this will let you get started on your build now.

Hmm. I was able to pick up the correct reducing T at a big box store where you "save big money." I haven't personally tried one with a reducer as you describe, so I can't tell you for sure whether it will work (well) or not. Even though these are common "off the shelf" parts, they are matched well to create the fuel/air flows and ratios needed for the burner to function correctly. What seems like a small deviation from the plan could have a bigger effect on the air flow than you might think. Straying from the plans without a good understanding of how it will affect the performance is a good way to end up frustrated. I seem to recall someone on here posting pictures on here of doing what you describe and having a working burner. However, a flame at the end of the burner doesn't necessarily mean you have the desired performance. I suppose the bottom line is I don't really know if that will make a big difference in performance or not.

I think you're right JHCC. Thanks for catching that.

I think the tongs you refer to have been called the Ultimate Tongs and are pictured here: https://plus.google.com/photos/117030057799529631445/albums/5451920122058541745 The forging and construction is very similar to bolt tongs except only one jaw has the V shape cut in and the other has the shape you referred to. I didn't find a YouTube video specific to those tongs, but this one would help with almost everything you would need to do to make those. Of course if you don't have a power hammer it will take you a bit longer to do some of the drawing out, but it should still give you a good handle on the steps involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmBXrC4S5as

Since no one answered you when you asked this question before I'll pass on my understanding and maybe Frosty will jump in as well. The short answer is yes. The long answer is if you do then you have to scale up the other components as well. You'd need 8 to 9 inches of burner tube, a .045 mig tip, and a reducing T that has a 1 inch drop and 2 openings of 1.25 inch (I think). However, this will also increase your fuel consumption and it may be too much burner for your forge. You'll need more distance between the burner opening in your forge and the opposite wall for it to function correctly (compared to the 3/4 inch burner) I believe this burner would be for forges in the 400 to 750 cubic inch range, whereas the 3/4 inch burner is better for the 200 to 350 cubic inch range. Hope that helps and I'm sure if I got anything wrong Frosty can clarify it for you.

That brings back some memories from a few decades ago. It's kind of tricky to stay on the trays and have any kind of steering capability on your way down though. I bought a used car in Fairbanks and went through an entire winter without realizing I had no rear brakes. I got pretty good at shifting into neutral, and occasionally even into reverse, to stop though.

Good stuff. Have you tried a .045 mig tip with that setup? That's about the size I'd normally expect with a 1 inch diameter straight tube NA burner, but not sure that's optimum for your setup. The tinkerer in me wants to go out and give something like this a try as soon as ... well yesterday, but there's that whole job, life, and holiday thing in the way at the moment.

I work with gloves sometimes and other times not, depending on the work, the ambient temperature, etc. I haven't noticed a big difference in aggravating my tennis elbow one way or the other. IMHO the tong hand should be fairly relaxed as well and is more for stabilizing when the work is on the anvil than anything else. The anvil should be holding the weight, so I can use a fairly loose grip which decreases the impact of vibrations compared to a firm grip. When possible I stand in such a way that I hold the stock similar to how I hold a pool cue. I keep the elbow in tight to my body and have a relaxed grip on the stock with the majority of the weight on the anvil. Good hammer blows flat on the stock and anvil is also key in keeping the vibrations to a minimum. Where I really aggravated my "tong arm" when forging was repeatedly transferring at piece of 1.5 inch round stock that was over 2 feet long between the forge and anvil. I couldn't choke up on it much due to the heat and that forced me to grip it quite hard. At the time I was using an 8 pound sledge one handed, which I can only do for a handful of strikes at a time, but the hammer arm didn't experience nearly the additional pain and discomfort as the tong arm.

Interesting indeed. I'm curious about a few things which you may not have determined yet. Are you able to change the atmosphere inside the forge from oxidizing to neutral to reducing? Have you determined if you can reach forge welding temperatures in there? How is the noise compared to something like a single 3/4 inch NA burner? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who wants more info. Thanks for posting this.

With smaller diameter/cross section stock I generally use lengths that don't require me to use tongs, and I also support the piece with my hammer hand between the forge and the anvil. Just have to be very aware of the "hot zone" on the piece being worked and/or use the hammer to rest the piece on while transferring. And for larger diameter material stock I cut off what I need to work with so I'm not trying to lift a lot of weight with one hand. It's a balancing act of sorts, but for me the goal is to handle things in a way that doesn't require a tight grip. On the hammer side your grip shouldn't be tight anyway, and once you develop the habit of a somewhat loose grip you don't really have to think about it any more.

Squeezing the tongs or lifting/stabilizing heavy stock with your non-hammer hand can cause or aggravate the condition. It did for me anyway. In my case I think it's more gripping something tightly that causes the problem rather than the shock from hammering. I have tennis elbow in both arms, but hammering for me rarely seems to cause any additional pain or problems. YMMV

I'm interested to see how this works out for you. In addition to what others have mentioned I have a couple other comments. I'm not saying they don't exist, but when I switched over to variable speed on mine I could not find a 2 hp 3 phase motor that operated on 110v. Anything that claimed to be 2hp was no more than 1.5 hp if you used 110v when you looked at the "fine print." It's possible the inverter changes the 110v input to 220v output in addition to making it 3 phase, but if so you may need to look at the amps used under startup and full load. The second thing, and they even bring this up in the listing, is that the VFD (or inverter as they call it) is not designed for dusty environments. Unless you build a good enclosure for it you can expect the abrasive and metal particles to cause it to fail within a fairly short period of time. I modified an old PC case to mount the cheap VFD I bought and so far have had no problems, but that doesn't mean it will hold up like the NEMA 4X models you can get through Wayne Coe who is a member here.

There will be some heat loss, but whether it will be enough to keep you from reaching welding temps I don't know. What you will likely find more problematic is the tendency of steel to warp when it's heated and cooled repeatedly. If you have tight tolerances on your guillotine setup you will probably experience some binding within a few sessions.

In addition to that, air that does not participate in the combustion process will produce a cooling effect to some extent since it effectively becomes a continual heat sink, so while excess air may help drive a more complete combustion, it does not necessarily mean maximum temperature inside the forge. Either too much air or too much fuel will reduce the temperature inside the forge somewhat.

"My understanding was that there was less fuel wasted with forced air. No?" I'm not sure how that would be possible. Did anyone explain the mechanism by which this would happen? You indicated before that you had done stoichiometric calculations. Does the fuel/oxygen ratio change if the air is forced in with a blower compared to being induced by the fuel stream? FWIW I have used both in a much smaller forge using a single 3/4 inch burner. Tuning the flame to the desired type of atmosphere was quicker/easier for me with a blown burner, but if there was a difference in fuel consumption I couldn't detect it. In either case the goal is to have the correct amount of fuel and air entering the combustion chamber in order to maximize the heat output. Do the molecules in the reaction behave differently in one scenario versus the other?

No, you don't need a layer of refractory against the shell; just in the forge chamber itself. To follow up on what Thomas was saying, there is a common misconception that blown burners use less propane to produce the same heat. This is not true. Blown burners normally operate at less pressure than naturally aspirated burners, but the volume of propane used is identical (or very close to it). There are some potential efficiency differences between a ribbon burner and a single larger burner port regarding flame front speeds, exhaust, and the time the heat spends in the forge before exiting, but Frosty or Mike can tell you more about those. Regardless, you will use about the same amount of propane or natural gas to heat that forge whether you are going to use blown burners or naturally aspirated burners even though the pressures involved may be significantly different. At full volume that forge is going to require a lot of fuel, especially if you plan to reach forge welding temperatures. Oh, and thanks for the pics. We love pictures.

The one I saw that broke was a single main tine for lifting the bale and two much smaller and shorter tines on the corners of the frame - probably for stabilizing only. The tine didn't snap because of lifting bales. The guy who snapped it was moving junk cars around with it and got one stuck on it near the end of the tine. You can do the math from there.

I assume you're talking about the kind for moving round bales. Not sure if the 3 point hitch version is the same, but I have seen the main tine break off one made for a skid steer. There was no noticeable set either side of the break, so I would guess that one was at least a medium carbon steel that had been hardened. The diameter would seem about right for a hammer head, and you can check to make sure it is hard or will harden before you spend a bunch of time heating and beating.

You don't think that a birch tree to the coconut was enough?

One more thing here, Northwoodsman. In the topic title you refer to good steel for swords and perfect grinds. You can't make a good sword out of the wrong steel for sure, but there are quite a few alloys out there that can be made into good swords. However, the focus shouldn't be on the steel. It's the craftsman who creates perfect grinds or executes the correct heat treatment for the object he's making. This may be where there is a bit of a disconnect. No matter how "good" the starting steel is, a person who does a poor job forging, grinding/filing, and heat treating will never end up with a good sword. That's why we were generally giving you suggestions that focus more on you and developing your abilities rather than on the steel itself. Once your skills are up to the task there are a number of medium/high carbon steels that you would be able to successfully create a good functional sword from, but that won't happen over night or from reading the best instructive books out there or even from a few sessions at the anvil. The books are highly desirable, and the hammer/anvil time is critical if you want to forge a sword rather than do stock removal, but as was mentioned before there is no substitute for practice - and lots of it.

In some ways this could be considered derailing. Would that make it a post hole?

Wait, was it the brush or the sword that shattered into tree pieces? Perhaps a steel sword rather than a wooden sword wood have been in order I thought tree pieces was the whole point of chopping brush.

I think you're hedging a bit there, O sage one.

Northwoodsman, you were given a couple of good suggestions for starting steel. I don't consider your age to be a drawback at all here. We have members younger than you, but the difference is they have done their research and then started with the basics. What I do think is that you have a lot of reading to do in order to understand the processes involved in what you want to accomplish. This forum has a wealth of information, but you have to take the time to explore it to get the most out of it. I strongly suggest you read through the knife making and heat treating sections of the forum. After you get the terminology and understanding of what makes a good short blade down then it's time to make some. Only after getting to this point should you spend much time focusing on making your own sword. I'm not saying this to be discouraging. I also intend to make my own sword some day. I've been making knives as a hobby for a few years now and have yet to attempt a sword, although that may be something I do within the next 6 months or so. The reason I haven't tried yet is that making knives taught me how much I didn't know. Anybody can take a bar of steel and put a handle on it and an edge on it that will cut things. That is not a sword; it's a sword shaped object. If you want to make a replica that could function as well or better than the original it was based on then there are a lot of things that simply must be done right with very little margin of error. Getting any of them wrong will make it hard to wield or hold on to in the least case, and potentially fail catastrophically in use and hurt you or others around you in the worst case. If you don't have the cash to buy the suggested books, then read a lot on here and see if your local library can get the books you want to read through the ILL system. BTW the part about the temper, flexibility, and being bent out of shape as well as "center of percussion" are terms you need to know and understand well before attempting a long blade of any kind.

I keep coming back to look at this one. The blade pattern is almost reptilian. No matter how many times I look at it, it's still a handsome piece of functional art.