Buzzkill

It appears as though you are combining two things. Clay is used as a lining for solid fuel forges. From what you've said your intent is to build a gas forge. Clay is not a good choice at all for that application. Besides the cracking, it is heavy, not very insulating, and a big heat sink. The extra cost in propane to run a clay lined forge (even if you were successful) would fairly quickly pay for the cost of suitable materials. There is a pretty extensive gas forge section on the forum and usually 2 or 3 current conversations happening regarding the construction of gas forges. Rather than attempt to repeat a significant portion of it here I hope you'll take the time to read through some of what has already been discussed on the forum and you'll get an idea pretty quickly of what makes a good gas forge. http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/65-gas-forges/

I'm going to echo SLAG on this. Thanks a bunch. I bookmarked that site for further in depth reading.

I think I understand that. Essentially you're using the bevel to set the depth of the cut and changing the angle of the blade (riding on the bevel) to the wood to determine the "bite size." Do I have that more or less correct?

This may not be much help to you, but two phrases went through my mind when reading this: "Starving artist" and "It's better to regret something you have done than something you haven't done." In other words if you are so passionate about something that you're willing to live a spartan life to pursue it then it will always seem worth it to you. If you are passionate about something but you let fear of failure stop you, it's quite possible that you will spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. Nearly everyone has said that if you're going to take a risk, the time to do it is when you are young and have relatively few responsibilities. If you spend 4 years of your life pursuing what you think is your passion and find out it is not, you still have a solid education and time on your side most likely. What none of us can figure out for you is your level of passion for this craft. There's also 2 parts to that. You may have a lot of passion to work with your hands and make things, but absolutely no passion to actually run a business. If that's the case you would most likely fail if you tried to start your own business, but you might be very happy working for someone else. These things are specific to you and none of us can tell you what you find interesting or exciting now, nor can we accurately predict whether or not you will feel the same way a handful of years from now. Good luck whatever you choose.

Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

True enough. Bringing someone up to welding heat and smacking him with a hammer rarely results in a lasting friendship.

I went to an auction today and picked one up for a few bucks, so I may wait a while to forge one at this point. A froe has been on my list of things to make for a while. Maybe I'll move it up the list a bit. Just FYI and unrelated. There was a Kohlswa anvil there, which I'd say was around 100 lbs. An Ebay reseller bought it and figures he'll get about a thousand bucks out of it. I told him he was crazy and he showed me a couple in the 60 to 70 pound range that sold for more than that. I guess some people don't know you can buy them new for less than that. Maybe we should buy new anvils and immediately put them on Ebay at a premium price.

It may be a good option, but from what I've seen he doesn't include a motor or drive wheel or any way to get multiple speeds. With those things taken into account you may be close to a Pheer in price.

Thanks Frank. I'll check it out. You went way above and beyond what anyone could or should expect in directing me to this information. Thanks again.

Thanks again. I don't normally harden the tang on my knives and the whole piece goes into the oven for tempering, so even if it were hardened it would naturally get the same temper as the blade. The shape of the draw knife and tangs may not let me use my normal methods though, so it's a good tidbit to keep in mind for me. The way it looks to me the blade is beveled only on one side, which is the side against the wood. Is it typical for that to just be a flat grind from the spine to the cutting edge to sharpen the blade, or is it more like a chisel grind near the cutting edge for sharpening? Also some of them seem to have kind of a slight smile shape to the blade. Does that make it perform better or is that just an unimportant result of the forging process when the bevel is created? Sorry for all the questions, but like I said I have no experience using one of these and I'd rather ask the questions and put my best foot forward before starting.

Thanks for the input. Thomas, I've been working almost exclusively with high carbon steel for the past couple years, mostly making knives. While I'm far from an expert by any stretch of the imagination I can generally get the shapes I want without a lot of difficulty. What I have almost no experience in is the use of the tools, so I'm not sure about some of the details. I realize that my wording wasn't clear, but the shaping of the knife isn't my concern. It's which of those steels is a better starting material for this specific tool, how far to draw the temper after hardening, any geometry specifics that aren't obvious in pictures, and things of that nature. I probably wouldn't have thought about what littleblacksmith mentioned, so things like that are what I'm looking for.

So, I got a wild hair last weekend and decided to build a wood lathe, mostly out of parts I had after upgrading my belt grinder. The only experience I have turning wood is the couple pieces I did when I got it functional. Now I'm thinking I need to forge some tools to help out there, and a draw knife is one thing I thought might help with the rough shaping before I put pieces on the lathe. I've got some O1 drill rod, plenty of coil spring and leaf spring, and some old files I could use. Since I have no experience here I'm looking for advice/preference on those starting metals and any tips, tricks, or pitfalls I should be aware of before I start shaping hot steel. I'll also be making some turning tools so any advice related to those will be appreciated as well.

You can shield the motor somewhat, but it's cooled by air moving through the openings, so you probably don't want to eliminate air flow. Other than trying to make sure you deflect anything coming directly off the belt away from the motor you can use compressed air to keep it clean after every use and probably get by for a while. I find that over time there tends to be a layer of abrasive dust and such that settles on everything anywhere near the grinder so it's not just the direct debris that will take a toll, but the direct debris will definitely degrade things faster.

If you use the 3/4 hp on a 2x72 grinder it will bog down a lot unless you step the speed down a bit with pulleys. Since I have not used 1x42 with a .5 hp motor I can't tell you how it will feel in comparison. Also for any motor you use, if it's not TEFC you will probably have a short lived motor due to abrasive and metal bits getting in the openings of the motor.

We're ok with you posting pictures. No need to be defiant about it. I haven't seen anyone mention it and you're probably already aware...... but unless that is high carbon stainless it will not harden and so it's more suitable for a wall hanger or a letter opener than a knife that needs to hold a cutting edge. A lot of the commonly used stainless is 304 or 316 and neither of those will harden when quenched. If it does happen to be a hardening alloy then the proper heat treatment is probably pretty difficult to do without a proper heat treating oven. Either way, welcome to the dark side. I'm looking forward to seeing what you create next.

I have almost no experience with something like this so I'm just spitballing at this point. It seems like this may be a good candidate for 3D printing to make the texture in wax, cast in refractory normally used for ribbon burners, then melt the wax. A close nipple with some pins tack welded on could be set in one end and oriented properly with the wax. That would let you screw a T on to the end. Like I said though I have no practical experience here. I just wish I had the time and money to play around with some of these ideas more.

Well, if you cast the burner tube (or most of it) you should be able to put whatever texture you want in it. It would also be easy to cast the flare at the right ratio. Instead of a ribbon burner you could cast a single hole of the right size in a block. Just a thought.

Thanks! Yes. It's hard to see in the pics, but the tanto has a convex grind from the tip down to the main cutting edge which is hollow ground. A friend of mine who is not a knife enthusiast took the pics, so he focused on some different aspects than I would have if I were taking them. I still use a "dumb phone" so transferring pics is a PITA for me.

No. The regulator by itself is sufficient. You may want to leave the ball valve in place to have a quick shutoff option though.

MbMul175, No one is going to be able to accurately answer that question. I can tell you what my T burner uses in my forge at my location at the temperatures at which I forge and with the openings I have in my forge. The point is there are a lot of variables which will affect how much fuel you use in a given amount of time. How well your burner is tuned, your elevation and general weather conditions, the insulation of your forge, the size of the openings, and the temperature you are trying to reach (and a few other factors) will all potentially affect your fuel usage and are not likely to be identical to anyone else's situation. For rough figuring I get close to 10 hours of time from one 20 pound propane tank when I'm just doing "regular" forging. If I were trying to forge weld it might be half that. I don't know because I haven't tried it with my forge yet. My forge is fairly small though - roughly 216 cubic inches of volume.

You may want to stuff some scrap kaowool around the burners in the holding tubes. That may also affect the tuning of your burners as well. My forge is smaller than that and the outside shell gets too hot to place a hand on it without injury, but has never gotten hot enough to burn the original paint off the cylinder. You can turn a big burner down quite a bit, but you can only turn a small burner up so far. You gave 622 cubic inches as your volume I think. That would put it beyond the capacity of a single 3/4" burner, but still within the range of two 3/4" burners.

Good question, but it may have more than one answer. The first one is it depends on your tank size. If you're using grill sized propane tanks that still may not be enough. When I run a single 3/4 inch T burner on a single BBQ tank for more than a couple hours I can lose pressure. So, if you don't anticipate forging for too long then you can probably get by with individual tanks of that size. I just got a Mr. Heater 2 Tank Hook Up Kit for running my single burner to keep the problem to a minimum. That will allow me to still use a single regulator for both tanks. My guess is if you are running two 3/4 or 1 inch (or a combination of both) you'd need 3 or more of those tanks hooked together for long forging sessions. If you're using 100 lb tanks then 2 of those would probably get you by, but I have no direct experience there and I'm sure someone else out there does. Another simple solution is to place your tanks in a shallow water bath to keep the tank from getting cold so fast. You don't want it deep or you risk the tanks tipping over as they empty, but water should contact the entire bottom of the tank to be effective. A gallon or two of water makes a lot of difference in the tank temperature. Still, with 2 burners of that size you probably want a separate tank for each or 2 tanks linked together. Let us know what works or didn't work. I'm curious in case I decide to build a bigger forge.

With both a 3/4 and 1 inch burner running I would say that yes, that is most likely the culprit. Mike or Frosty are obviously more well suited to answer the finer points on this, but I believe the 1 inch also needs more space between the end of the burner tube and the first obstruction the flame will hit (opposite wall) in order to function correctly. I had a dual gauge system on mine for a while, like you would see on an oxy/acetylene system, and there is a significant drop in tank pressure well before it gets frost on the outside or feels particularly cold, especially when it's nearly empty. It's also possible that you have some debris from the build that collected in your jet, but my money is on trying to pull too much propane from too small a tank too quickly.

I had mentioned that if it were not magnetic it was probably stainless. If magnetic it was probably zinc coated, but could still be stainless.

Sorry. You are right. That discussion belongs elsewhere.