cranky

Well it certainly seems as if I have fallen into a group with you guys, my own story is a bit similar to Frosty's and Thor's, in high school I took every vocational class they would let me... in fact skipped english math and social studies to spend more time in the shop classes, it helped my shop skills tremendously but didn't do a whole lot of good for my scholarly learning.....I finished my 12th grade as a freshmen with a total of 7 credits for 4 years of school (tech classes only counted for .25 credits) although I did manage to finish my two years of science.... I like science. Grew up on a family farm that was run by a grandfather and uncle that were depression children.... they didn't buy anything if it can't be made then you don't need it..grandfather was a jack of all trades, a fully trained veterinarian, farrier and farmer...he had a complete blacksmith shop as I recall in our original shop on the farm with a couple anvils a forge a old post drill press (I think that is what they were called) and two post vises.....when I was about 10 we built a new bigger shop and my uncle bought a welder and torch set along with grinders, and a drill press.... well I almost lived in that shop When I was 15 I got my first paying job working in a prototype machine shop for Steiger Manufacturing....all i did was sweep floors and such but the harder I worked the more I got to do, first welding....then drill presses...lathes...mills those three brothers taught me so very much..... two of the brothers and their father died in a plane crash not all that long ago...the world lost a lot of intelligence that day... these dumb xxxxx farm boys built a tractor in the 1950's and did such a good job at it they created a multi million global business out of it 1996 My uncle retired from farming and I took over, I still tend to think the same old fashioned way I was brought up....fix instead of buy. I still work off the farm

I believe you guys mistook some of what I was saying.....I apologize, sometimes when I type I get ahead of myself, brain works much faster than the fingers, At work I get paid to waste my time teaching newbies, we normally get 12 at a time, of the twelve one...maybe two turn out to be "good ones" you better believe those one or two get the royal treatment, I will teach the star of the group to tram in a mill..have him or her do it twice with me...then teach his cohorts how to do it.... that way he gets to do it like 14 times in one day for lots of practice.....repetitions do sink in quite deep.... works quite well for me, not trying to blow my own horn but we have 97 machinists where I work.....of that number 13 of our best have been trained by me...yes I am quite proud of that figure..please keep in mind most of these best are younger than some of the machinists have been machinists At my own shop the people that i take in are children of employee's and a few high school kids hand picked by a high school shop teacher... this "kids" tend to get the dirtiest grimiest jobs I can find for them, the one's that do the job for a few days without complaining tend to get moved onto more challenging work very quickly, and quite often will even find a small paycheck for themselves.... believe me I'm not stupid and weed out the ones that just want a quick fix now type of thing....I'm about teaching a trade not just playing a game. Steve my sincere apologizes for my poor choice of words, I can only speak for myself but when I said I want to make a sword.... i guess it would have been more appropriate to say I want to build something with my own hands that looks suspiciously like a sword that can hang from my wall to be taken down and shown to people and brag about.... if an intruder were to ever break into my house believe me I have more than enough guns to deter anything up to and perhaps including a canadian military invasion (sorry all you Canucks I live like 60 miles from the border and when I wanted to get a federal tax stamp to buy class three weapons my sheriff asked why I thought I needed it.....of course the first thing that came to mind was "to fight off the Canadian invasion of course" he laughed at me and then signed my form) I believe that most people that want to make a sword want the same thing as me? a wall hangar that looks cool as all get go. As for myself....after reading here for a few weeks have come to the conclusion that I may have underestimated what it takes... as of yesterday I have just joined a blacksmith guild that is somewhat local to myself.... I actually got the chance to hold a handmade Damascus knife and gotta say it was even cooler than looking at pictures as for stickies the ones you did on knives is very cool.....I have read most of them... very nice job.... but as far as building a forge.....all I could find was broken links at every turn..not your fault but it is what it is for everyone that helps the newbies I thank you....believe me I do know how stupid we can be dave

I can't believe I am commenting on a 4 year old post, but alas here I am and once again I have an opinion.... not being a blacksmith, as of now and totally being a newbie as I am I do want to make a sword...my original time line was like two years to make one, I am seeing that may be just a bit under-evaluated Some people talk about teaching classes that make a sword in a week...I commend you, those people that you teach are getting what they want, a sword they MADE with all bragging rights and such...it doesn't matter if the balance is off a bit...or if it has a couple hammer marks in it...as long as it is safe and made with enough supervision to ensure it's safety bottom line is they made it. I mean lets face it how many of you professional sword makers have ever made a sword that was used in a life or death circumstance? As for teaching newbies I learned my skills as a machinist by hanging out at a machine shop in my youth...when the owner of the shop said to me " if your gonna hang out here you might as well do something constructive and sweep the floor" I jumped at the chance and was amazed at the end of the week when he came over to me and handed me my first paycheck and my time card for the following week. time went by sweeping the floor, holding something as someone did whatever they were doing to it when the boss dude asked if i thought I could manage drilling some holes with a drill press....my answer " you show me what to do and I will do it" fast forward 35 years or so and I'm the boss dude at both my own shop and one that I work at, in my own shop, which is mainly a welding shop with me or my son the two primary machinists... we have Wednesday freebie night where our welders are allowed to make, fix, their own stuff, and when it comes down to machining stuff I supervise and teach them the skills they need to know in order to do it safely... we even have a few high school students that the shop teach (who is a friend of mine) gave me name of that come around and do side projects and such. At work we have a apprenticeship program believe it or not where we take an average person off the street and give them a 6 week crash course on print reading basic metal cutting theory and such......at which point I get to take them into our manual shop and TEACH them everything they need to learn hands on while making production parts. this task can really suck due to some peoples poor work ethics, and such....but from each group that I have taught so far it seems as if at least one or two really want to learn and these two make it all worthwhile I guess my point is Treat all newbies as if they were your first one ever.....until such time as they show their true colors and are just wasting your time.....if it takes you more than a day or two to figure out the good ones from the bad....maybe you need a bit more schooling yourself And just for a thought of the moment, why not create some stickies with numbers such as the knife making ones such as "Forge making 101" ,"burner making 101" and so forth and so forth and then you fine very experienced craftsman that answer so many questions can go in and tell everyone in one simple place everything us newbies need to know. I see frosty answering the very same questions I just got done asking a few weeks ago to someone new just yesterday..... please keep in mind that apparently this server has undergone a recent upgrade and believe me finding information is not the easiest thing on here right now...many pages deadend is " this page no longer exists" and tons of pictures are missing Just my two cents worth....what with inflation and worth squat Dave

A sledgehammer wielding girlfriend, dude your so lucky...all my girl wants to do is buy shoes beautiful work BTW

So people this is going to be quite off topic for this section and I assume it might get moved but oh well: So after reading quite excessively on this forum the last couple weeks I'm going to say once again, I am in awe with the amount of knowledge you people process, so my question...what kind of education, jobs, upbringing do you all have that gives you such a level of knowledge? Perhaps I am being over simple with this question, I also have most of the knowledge you have been demonstrating.... but I no where near reach your level of technical data. EX. I also know that acetylene is dangerous.... I had no idea why until frosty and thomas and lattance explained it to me..heck I can't even spell acetylene without spellcheck Thor made a comment in another topic that if he lived within 3 hours of frosty he would be grabbing all the information he could from frosty, I'm gonna go one step further and say " I live 3000 miles from frosty and have a huge 'man crush' (in a purely mannish way, as in "hey bud lets go bend some steel later okay buddy? hey bud can I get ya another brewski? want for me to cook up a couple steaks for us bud?) I picture frosty as (to steal a line from one of my favorite movies) " 7 feet tall with fire shooting from his xxxx" Remember the cartoon with the big bulldog I think his name was spike and the little mutt bouncing around all the time and spike swats his butt out of the way? frosty is spike....2 guesses who the little mutt is :-) Thomas I am quite certain you are some type of Nuclear Physicist Engineering Podiatrist responsible for designing the pyramids, hoover dam and quite possibly Nikola Tesla's tutor

Thanks Thomas, I sure wish I had read your post before approaching the missus. Perhaps she would have said "sure" instead of "why don't you Exothermically Disassociate yourself" Johnny I'm glad you're getting the regulator, even though i kind of made a joke of your post i learned so very much, my personal lessons taught to me on torch tanks, "hey be careful of them or you will blow us all up" that and the results of a guy that used his tanks as a work bench cutting off a piece of steel on his tailgate.... I wasn't there until after all was done and over but I do know there was a closed casket funeral for the guy (I was part of the first response team that arrived on scene...it wasn't till much later in the day that I found out what had happened.....truth be told I didn't even know there was a person involved for about an hour afterwards when parts started appearing) Okay I have one more question for you all but it has nothing to do with this, so I'm gonna start a new post and hope you will stop by and check it out and even answer my question

Frosty, Once again I am humbled with the knowledge of you fine people. While I knew the importance of flashbacks on my torch set......I never knew why they were important other than to prevent a backfire. I have been using Oxy Acet. torchs for better than 40 years and while I knew they were "dangerous" tools I never thought too much about it, if I read your post correctly this is the first time I ever knew that Acet. had hydrogen as a component in it..... now hydrogen I have a strong respect for (in fact we can call it a fear). Years and years ago, about 1983 or so I worked with a self-proclaimed scientist as a budding machinist as he tried to make a reliable hydrogen engine, I know nothing of his credentials, but only know his checks were good when he wrote them....that and the fact he had to rebuild his shop 3 times after small explosions leveled them. While I claim to know "everything" and also claim to be within 2 and a half pages away from reading the internet.....I am amazed, humbled, and flabbergasted by the things that I learn here on a daily basis And while true that as a machinist I am pretty much as good as I claim to be (altho my coworkers tell me that claiming that Jesus is my brother from another mother is a bit far fetched) I do hope to someday have someone such as frosty, wayne, or a dozen or more others here give me the title of " half axxed blacksmith" So my sincere apologies for making light of a serious subject....had i known how serious this was I would still have made the joke but been more sober about it I wonder what ever happened to that scientist guy? I sure hope he didn't Exothermically Disassociated himself I sure hope St. Peter doesn't have a naughty blasphemous list with my name on it.... send directly to HE double Hockey Sticks where he will be Exothermically Disassociated on a daily basis. and lastly (and probably five steps over the line) I wonder if the little woman wants to have her brains Exothermically Disassociated tonight? OH GET A REGULATOR JOHNNY......we don't want you getting Exothermically Disassociated please note the red color, it means very important Good god why don't I ever get forbidden when I really think it would be best?

Holy Cow Thomas its posts like this that have me in a sense of wow with you, just between you and me did you make up the term exothermically disassociate and I can only guess but does it mean it burns? I'm gonna start using that as code word with my wife..."hey baby wanna exothermically disassociate with me tonight???? Sorry this might be a tad inappropriate but I am absolutely flabbergasted at the jargon you dumb XXX anvil beaters( this is said with the utmost sincere respect....as in cool is hot!) use. I'm not a overly stupid person and am amazed to think how close I came to spending my entire life without the thrill of ever hearing such a brainiac term And just to say something that IS fitting here there is no way you can control the pressure or volume of propane off the bottle valve... you need the regulator for safety and fine tuning

I agree with you damsutt why can't these people just tell you what you want to know? Can't they see your a world renowned chef? Hells bells my exwife could cook a mean pot of mac N cheese, sometimes she would even put some cut up gourmet hotdogs in it!!! And a bee keeper besides, does that make you as smart as a black bear? I bet your no where as cute tho. And a woodworker to boot, you certinaly seem to be as anoying as a woodpecker. Even as a brand new newbie here, I can spot huge issues with your design, most of which have been addressed in many a post here including your own. So serious question if I may, with starting with a 36 inch drum for your knife making forge... which mythical creatures do you have your eye set upon slaying with your new magical knives? May I suggest staying away from dragons as everyone knows you need to start with no less then a 48 inch drum forge for them. Personaly i find unicorns to put up the best fight closely follwed by centaurs. So seriously if you would like my advice.... the first thing you should do is head on over to the disccusion group at Iamafriggingenius.com and be sure and tell them how smart you are... then after figuring out your a frigging idiot in your newest endeavor I would come back here and read and when you get done reading.....read some more, then......read for three more days, by that time you might just realized you have insulted the man that seems to have helped almost everyone on this site.... in every section In other words.....do some home work than ask for help. Okay thomas, frosty, thor,and all you others go on say it your all thinking it....... where is the great cranky with his beheamuth I can do anything attitude? I took the short cut to figureing out I'm a idiot by listening to you all. (Fingers were crossed, i know I'm great still) One other thought dude.... dont try to reinvent the wheel too much...... with thousands and thousands of people before you making forges it seems almost all the new ideas have been ussed already....just give your new forge a KISS.... and for gods sake dont slip it no tongue!!!

Holy crap, I expected a whole lot of laughing with perhaps a bit of accidental peeing with that question.... so I'm good to go just going to my local menards store and buying these for the floor of my new forge? I have been very reluctant to buy bricks online because of the shipping issue....I just can't get over the idea of paying postage on rocks Thor do I understand correctly that you have the hard brick making up your brick pile forge?

John if you look in my long drawn out post titled "more stupid questions from a newbie" you will find a lot of answers from frosty on how to make a Frosty T Burner, parts for the burners are quite cheap.. he also explains sizing requirements and gives me lots and lots of advice from my own experience do some research on this site... read read and then read some more and then start asking sensible questions and everyone here starts answering away Good luck with your endeavors Dave

Frosty I personally think your doing a great job spreading your knowledge, and seeing as you have answered that very same question to me in the last week it must get old being asked the same old questions everyday. I guess what I am seeing on IFI is all newbies think alike(darn it I like to be different). If a 10" pipe makes a good forge than 36" has gotta be way cooler.....I'm gonna improve upon the simple burner and make it better....(even tho I have never made one before) if 9" is a good length than 24" must be way better......and the killer thought.....I watched a 1 hour tv show a few times, I know as much as these idiots that have been doing it for 10, 20,30 years I guess what I want to say is, Thank You Frosty and also wayne, thor, and and everyone else that share your hard earned knowledge with us newbies I for one really appreciate it.

Okay I'm sure I know the answer to my question, Are the firebricks sold at the big box stores such as menards or lowes the same firebrick we are talking about for forge use? http://www.menards.com/main/heating-cooling/fireplaces-stoves/stove-accessories/vogelzang-6-pack-firebrick/p-1392272-c-6881.htm?tid=7630923386214666561 http://www.menards.com/main/heating-cooling/fireplaces-stoves/stove-accessories/refractory-brick-4-5-x-9-x-1-25/p-2227108-c-6881.htm?tid=7630923386214666561 and does this stuff have any good use in forge building? http://www.menards.com/main/heating-cooling/fireplaces-stoves/fireplace-accessories/3000-degf-contractor-grade-furnace-cement-16-oz/p-2277682-c-6845.htm?tid=7630923386214666561

Very nice job Sir

YAY!!!!! winner winner chicken dinner I got two....count em two stamps of approval on my idea, so we have mailbox design (what a cool name, way better then my sideways D) with kiln shelf floor so installing the burners from the bottom, I first imagined the burner coming straight up from the bottom with the metal sitting right on top of it....this sounded like a very bad idea,so may I assume that this tristan fellow installed the burner at about the 4 or So next week I start cutting steel and welding And starting Immediately I am changing my alter ego's name from "The complicator" to "David the Simpleton" somehow it makes me think of saying "hold my beer and watch this" maybe "KISSWD" Keeping It Simply Stupid With Dave" Photos will most definitely be included as I make headway now edit

I kinda like the way too long bolts....it is mans way of helping out the darwin theory Just last weekend we had a maintenance guy crawl inside a CNC machine while the spindle was turning at an leisurely 10,000 RPM with a 4" shell mill in it....said shell mill grabbed dudes shirt and tore it right off his back , at which point he got some brains and vacated the machine... went off found himself a shirt to wear, had a smoke to calm his nerves after his harrowing encounter returned to finish his job of coolant change and cleaning of the machine crawled back inside.... with spindle still spinning and yelled quite loudly when said spindle decided to tug his ponytail out of head This dude is one of the few the brave and the trained that has keys to bypass safety interlock systems During the post accident report he was asked where he got his secondary shirt from, his reply..." well ever since the first time I lost my shirt this way I always keep a spare in my tool box" honest to god idiot said this This same dude somehow managed to set a skidsteer bucket on his foot while he was switching buckets out.... no one can quite figure out how he did it while he was driving the skid steer but darned near ripped his foot off Oh and he tipped a forklift on it's side squishing the daylights out of his hand, his explanation.....big gust of wind blew him over Thank god for the darwin theory otherwise work sure would be boring

Okay what I was trying to say when I was attacked by the forbidden syndrome Yes my plan was to lay out two layers of one inch wool on the floor and then put in (2) 4.5" by 9" .5 thick or what ever the thinnest i can get is... or I was thinking perhaps One of the kiln shelves I have read about on top of the insulation. So first I need to decide a form so I can start creating My options are (1) 9" by 36" 18 ga sheet, rolled into a 11" diameter cylinder with two inches ceramic wool inside and with insulating brick ends with a single hard firebrick for a floor...this would give a usable chamber of 7" dia. by 9" long minus the fire brick......or about 346 cubic inches as excited as I was to think SS to begin with this one is becoming my least favorite, even with my abundance of toys (Thor, I'm not picking on you with this term...for your information you are not the first person to use that term with me just a couple weeks ago a coworker asked me..... "hey being the man that owns everything do you happen to have a acme thread pitch gage and center finder and if so can I borrow or buy it from you?" reply, yeah I think I got one or two, if I can find an extra one you can have them, the dude is now the proud owner of his own starrett pitch gage and center finder!.... so on with my dilemma I have no tig welder which is the only way i have ever welded stainless...I think I could MIG it but dont wanna waste a learning curve just on welding SS which I won't do very much no matter what (2) 12" ID 3/8 walled pipe 9 inches long bottom cut off to create a D shape which will rest on the bottom with a 8" by 9" hard brick or kiln shelf floor with 2" insulation below floor and also overhead, with soft firebrick ends.... so far I am really digging this idea this should result in a 8" by 9" floor with a 8 inch radius circle above it which should give me in the neighborhood of 350 cubic inches ( complicated math aint my thing even with your guys going as far as finding me the formula..thanks by the way..so I just figured the volume of the cylinder subtracted 1/3 for the D and said Yeppers I'm close) So question about #2 my very first post mentioned this pipe and my forge plan of 8" by 24" final size and everyone said "typical newbie way too big" I took that to mean the 8" was too big... was it the 8" or the 24" that got me into trouble? (3) 8" dia ID 3/8 walled pipe 9" long2 " of insulation with firebrick ends and one brick for a floor Decisions decisions I really like the D shape and I believe charles and charlotte are also intrigued now I wonder if I get forbidden again Now I wonder..... if we made a deal with IPS... every time we get a forbidden statement the give us a dollar....every time we post with no issues they give us a dollar.....I wonder who would make money...my guess frosty retire again as a billionaire I MAKE MONEY ON THIS ONE..those suckers owe me 5 bucks!!!!

Thanks latticino for dragging me back to modern times where my toilet actually flushes :=) Yes my plan was to lay out two layers of one inch woll on the floor and then put in 4.5" by 9" .5 thick or what ever the thinnest i can get is... or I was thinking perhaps One of the kiln shelves I have read about on top of the insulation I'm planing on using borax and understand the stuff just eats insulation like a room full of kids with cotton candy... this is how someone explained it to me,

Oh man don't even get me started on outhouse stories dude, Those doggone spoiled rotten girls had a private little water closet in the corner of the basement..Sears Roebuck used to sell the darnedest things! how bout a commode that conveniently had a 5 gallon bucket under the seat? the princesses were allowed to use the throne in the winter months as opposed to running out to the guest house, us guys, uncle included were expected to go outside to the "boys room" And to add insult on top of the unjustness of this......I will give you three guess who's job it was to empty said honey pot!!! yes it was the guys job each one of us would do it for a week even my uncle....the one thing I can say about that dude he never asked us to do anything he wasn't willing to do himself By the way our Shower consisted of a shower placed under the stairs going up stairs with a drain running down though the floor and making a sharp 90 degree turn headed for the outside wall which went out the wall about 10 feet and landed on the ground..... our kitchen sink was plumbed in a similar manner. For summer showers we had a 4' by 4' cement slab in the backyard next to a tree. the shower head was mounted onto this tree with a curtain going round the slab all fed by garden hoses.....this also was the "boys shower" dang those girls were spoiled I might have to call em back and complain some more. As for the view from your own outhouse...is there a bad view of Mt. McKinley? or a better question might be...whats Mt. McKinley? I thought our gov. just renamed it back to Mt. Denali?

I am simply trying to find out now what the general population considers the best shape and size... i'm seriously leaning toward the sideways D right now, I'm thinking two 4.5 by 9" firebricks for the floor with two 1 inch pieces of insulation under them would make for a very simple floor rebuild, I am also thinking that with three burners might get to temp quite a bit faster at which point shut one down if unneeded as for burners you notice i have quit asking about them? I have the makings now for (6) 3/4 sidearms.....(6) 3/4 T's..... and (5) 1/2 T's I'm gonna try em all and may'be sell the ones I don't want, heck I'm even thinking about making all three of my design forges to try out and the truly stupid ones set loose on the unsuspecting population of E-bay

could do that and would be a lot simpler than my plan... but as someone pointed out to me a few posts back when I was trying to over design frosty's burner, and if I'm not mistaken it might have been yourself Thor... I have a never ending need to play with my abundance of toys, that and the fact that a fat bottomed girl...oops flat bottomed forge wont roll out from under you and no legs are needed just set it on top of a rolling tool box... I'm not concerned about the volume of the chamber nearly as much as I am about even heat distribution .... this should be perfectly obvious but in the early days when the common farm house was heated by a wood burning cook stove located in the kitchen the kitchen was hotter then hades and yet water in the bedroom would freeze (trust me of this I know well. I grew up in this house) fondly do I recall a cold winter day waking up at 4:30 AM and everyone running down to the kitchen fast as you could dressed in whatever sleepwear you chose to sleep in and getting dressed by the stove which my uncle had gotten going for us just so we could go do our morning chores of feeding cattle and milking cows and such just to go to the house to take a shower in order to catch the bus to go to school. Which brings up another rant of Mine...Women's Lib. why do girls want it? In our house the girls took their showers first (all three of them) and ken and i got whatever cold water they left for us BRRRR The addition of a furnace in the basement and some ductwork solved this.... just like my three burner chamber does Thanks for allowing me a trip down memory lane, now i'm gonna give those three girls a call and remind them how terribly spoiled rotten they were How many of us are old enough to put Queen, Freddie Mercury and Fat Bottomed Girls together? I mean no disrespect to any female members :-)

A Ha says the cat to the mouse, Finally a picture of the Great Ones forge now I know what I must build (insert evil laugh please)

Well good news, I did a google search for Blacksmith Organizations in Northern Minnesota and lo and behold there is one. They will be at the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion this coming weekend and so will I. I was invited to stop by, talk a few folks check out some equipment and so forth.... they have meeting first monday of each month with classes for newbie's starting at 1:30 and lasting till 5:30..... this months meeting is postponed until the 14th due to the reunion. so by some chance do we have any members of the Northern Minnesota Metalsmiths org here? Anyone have any indication what happens at a metalsmith's meeting? i know what we do at our car club meetings....we sit around drink beer and BS each other about how fast our cars are even though none of us ever break a speed limit The meetings are about 100 miles from my house but i figure I could hit half of them or so perhaps more who knows?

Okay, my math skills be lacking as they are lets set them aside for a minute while I ask the question I really want to know.... Some trial and error on my part and a few years of experiments I could maybe figure this out on my own... these questions might have been answered before in other posts, but truth be told this site is not really the most search friendly place on the net and lastly I get the feeling that most of you, Frosty, Charlies, Thor, Latticino and everyone else replying back to me have been there, done that, and I am willing to bet even have a few scars to prove it. I would just like to garner some of that experience, maybe sliding though with a few less scars :-) After adding in 2 inches of ceramic fiber insulation I should have have a 7" dia. by 9" long forge body resulting in a fire box that is 346 cubic inches. So according to Frosty's formula for burner size, I am in the top tier of a 3/4 inch T burner..;... easy peasy not so sleazy! Except inquiring minds need to know some things! this is where my alter ego comes in. (1) seeing as we are near the larger size limit of a 3/4" burner would it hurt to step up to the 1" burner....other than a bit of wasted fuel usage and back pressure issue which I am assuming could be overcome with a larger opening on the ends of the forge and perhaps turning fuel pressure down a bit? (2) Assuming the general answer to #1 is "quit being a cranky and just use a 3/4 " stupid" would it be of any benefit to use (2) 1/2 inch burners located 3 inches from the ends in order to more evenly distribute the heat throughout the chamber? perhaps shooting one in from each side at an angle bouncing the flame off the opposite wall to get the swirl effect from both directions? (3) Lets assume the answer to #2 is "Cranky you're a frigging genius why didn't I ever think of that" Yeah I know I'm pressing my luck with this thought but how bout shooting (3) 1/2 burners in, 1 centered on the length and two from the opposite side 2.25" on center off the first, again from an angle bouncing the flame off the opposite wall, once again in order to more evenly distribute the heat and also improve the needs of heat from being at the larger end of a 3/4" allowance?( more clarification.... center burner coming in at about 2 o'clock bouncing off wall at about 8 o'clock and two burners coming in at 10 o'clock and striking the wall at about 4 o'clock (4) Quit being a cranky and just use a 3/4" burner stupid Second part of my question Instead of a cylindrical forge body would it behoove me to flatten down my forge allowing for a bit more floor space and possible wider working area, you know in case I ever decide to forge a battle axe intended to slay dragons with, just for more clarification if I made a oval forge versus a round one

xxxxxx forbidden well charles one of us is miscalculating , or we are calculating two different equations....a 12" round pipe with two inches of insulation will decrease the diameter to 8" so all together we have 4*4*3.1416*9= 452.......I believe you only insulated half of your pipe with two inches and forgot the opposite side will also have 2 inches on it Please correct me if I am wrong by my calculations one inch of insulation would bring us up to 706 or so