Xaiver

It's interesting, the base of the anvil was torched off and it's on a rocker. There are two bolts holding the anvil on the giant I beam. The bolts aren't tight though. It was still too low for me, so we made a base for the ibeam out of prelams. Now it's about perfect, could go down an inch, but it's close enough. I'm not going to worry about it. It's still a good size though.

Nope. Snug is a good descriptor. It's not so tight that the tool is stiff, but there isn't any wobble in it.

Sorry, I got lost half way through the thread, but, maybe you will be kind enough to let me toss in my 2 cents. Wouldn't it be easier to make a tool for twisting that takes the holes into account? Say a rod with pins to fill the holes and keep them from distorting? Then you could just stick the pins in, give it a twist to straighten, and the holes should be fine? Not that there is anything wrong with streamlining your making process though.

Two questions on that : the rivet didn't go in smoothly, so I rounded it a bit and then worked it in while it was warm. Then I warmed the whole thing until the rivet was hot again and gave it a couple hits with my 2 pound hammer... And it bent over instead of mushrooming. Is there a way to upset something that isn't on the end? Or is that justheating the shot you want upset and then doing as normal? Also, are you saying that I should have taken it slower setting the rivet?

Hey! Welcome to the forum. I spent a lot of time scrounging around to get the parts for my forge together. The folks here have been very helpful in all of my silly questions. I'm not a fan of formal education, so I've been hammering it out myself, so to speak. I'm in central Minnesota, myself.

They're not the most beautiful, and the rivet didn't close properly, so it's more bent over than riveted... But they hold 1" bar stock perfectly. That was the goal. So... How did I do?

Update : so, before I propped the burner up with the other blocks, the drilled fire brick would split in half on me after about 5 hours. I was replacing it every other day. Then I propped it up and it was working fine, with the flare sticking into the box about a quarter inch to half inch. Just nowI had it clamped so that the flare was about half an inch into the hole. Saw a few tendrils of smoke while it was running, so I looked in the gaps from the top, and the brick was cracked again. I'm going to have to make a run for softfire brick again at this rate. Just replaced it again, lowered the flare so that is about 1/2 inch up into the brick from the bottom. Didn't run it long enough to tell if it was going to break again. I've been out here all day and my ideas are running thin.... And I'm making mistakes, that's usually time to call it a day. On the plus sideI only burned myself twice today!

How far are we talking? Just inside the top of the brick, or in most of the way? I put a 2" spring clamp on the T to raise it a bit more. It is just a bit above flush with the bottom of the brick. Is that why the flare was getting red? :-P

It's difficult to see from there, but it's mostly out. Is this far enough? I have the top cross of the T resting on some refractory brick. I don't have a welder, so my solution was to use the brick to elevate it. Here is a view from the opening.

So I was trying to figure out how to make a bending tool, at first I was going to make a hardy one, but decided against that, since I don't have a big enough chunk of metal... And I broke my vice trying to cut down some fence posts. (I had a backup, fortunately) I had salvaged some oldbrake rotors from a friends scrap trailer. Upset some stock and pounded it in.... After some careful adjustments. Only problem was that the discwasn't heavy enough, so I clamped it to the drill press for now. Seems to work well... And I've got 3 more rotors left!

It's actually my garage... And I seriously need to get some fans for the Windows, but the wife keeps giving me projects faster than I can do them, so here's what I've got. Any opinions or ideas are welcome, of course.

Yeah, it's a black iron T with a... I don't know the name of it. It takes the jet end and makes it wider. In the top is a mig tip cut in half, threaded into the iron T. Then it runs back on a copper tube to a ball valve and a flash suppressor, then to a propane hose to a regulator control and then into the tank. I built the burner a year or two ago and itsat on my bench until I got around to finding that soft brick.

So, I hammered out what I feel is an improvement, and I'm fairly satisfied with it for now, mostly because I want to move on to something else for now. The only issue with it now is the rust. I read that a thin coat of poly eurethane will help a lot. I'll try that next. Fortunately though, our rings are tungsten, so they're fairly difficult to scratch. I will be adding a rubberized bit too the holder spot if I make some for other people. I'm in Central Minnesota, btw.

Thanks for the ideas guys, now I know what I'm going to change next. Time to learn to taper. Rubberized hangars is a pretty good idea, I'm sure that will have to be afeature that I add once I'm happy with the design, and maybe it can just be a dip sort of method, like making candles. Is this burner I'm using your design, frosty?It's working like a champ. I had an issue the first day with it losing the jet after an hour or so running, but i figured out that I had the pressure a bit low, and it would just lose it once the tank started to cool.... Then I would crank it up to full open, reestablish the jet and turn it back to where I wanted it.

Thank you. It shouldn't be hard to think of it like that, my dad always said "be careful. You're a big kid, you can break stuff" that's kind of drilled into my head by now. By all means, have at it. I'm still trying to figure out what it is that I don't like about it.

Hello everyone. I'm scrolling the forum on my mobile, so I'm sorry if I managed to miss the introduce yourself ' forum. I've been working on setting up my forge for about a year now. Ilive in town, so propane was the only real option... Didn't want to smoke out the neighbors. I made the pile of bricks forge, with a frost the burner. I also got ahold of a 100ish pound anvil from my inlaws. Salvaged some old rusty tongs from my grandma's barn, and I started trying to learn how to make this thing work. Anyhow, while I was brainstorming what to make, the wife said "you could make me another ring holder" Her wedding band has a mother of pearl on top, and they're pretty delicate. She takes it off to do chores and bathe andsleep and stuff. I've been tinkering around with some stock that I got from Menards (the home Depot of the Midwest) It takes me about an hour from firing to finish on one of these, but I'm still not completely happy with them.... Will keep working. Here's a couple photos of you all would like to see. pictured below : the first one is the one driven into the wood block. It didn't want to stand up, so I sharpened the base and hammered it into a block. The one that looks like egg noodles was the second attempt, stands on its own... Kinda ugly. The third one broke one of the arms when I was filling off the jagged edges... So it's a single ring holder... Looks much better. Stands on its own. The fourth one, I decided to split the arms in opposite directions. Stands on its own, actually looks really nice....

Howdy folks, We don't really say that up here, but it seems like a pretty solid greeting. I've been interested in metalworking for as long as I can remember, but I've never had the time or push to get started. We recently bought a house up in Central Minnesota, and now seems like as good of time as any. We've got a small child (20 months) and a dog. I've been gathering up pieces of things to try and see if I can get a working forge build here on the property. One of the major stumbling blocks that I'm running into is that we live in town. That might be an issue with the noise to the neighbors, but mostly I'm worried about how much smoke a solid fuel forge is going to produce. I'd rather not be smoking the neighbors out, if I can help it. Once I get that figured out, I'm going to have to figure out if I want to make an outdoor forge, or try and take over the garden shed. Anyhow, very helpful forum ya'll got here. -X