MikeAlmogy

very well. You are right and under any circumstance i DO NOT recommend the use of any of those materials. I was young and very stupid. (30 years ago)

Well as a teenager with no internet and lots of agriculture materials my friend and myself used to make our own fire powder. Not really black powder since we got the mixture all wrong but it did made a nice boom when we put it in a glass bottle, throw a burning match, quickly closed the lead and run away. After the second time we, even being young and fairly stupid, that it was too dangerous so we switched method to a pile of powder with a pipe bomb sticking inside. not a big pipe bomb. maybe 8-10mm diameter that we took from old brass/aluminium antenna. did make a nice fireworks. This powder was sooooo smelly. made load of smoke and stink of sulfur. Happy days :-)

Well i do love the smell of Smelting in the morning (ha ha ha) but i have no idea where to get ore from. I think that as a learning experience i would love to do that (in case zombies will take over and i will have to make my own metal) but unless it can be bought in large quantities, i do not see that happens. Sorry for lack of knowledge with the right terminology. Still new to me. Yes, i want a small (up to 3 kg) foundry. Sorry for the mix up. Who knew that an S can be so meaningful :-) Now you got me wondering where i can get ore from...oh well, another item on the to-do list.

Wait. i may have been mistaken. We do not have ore. I have no idea where to get ore from. I can buy bars and smelt them. That is what i intended. The goal is to do some smelting and to be able to make small trinkets and such. Nothing big. Well come to think of it, Near the dead sea there is a place that in ancient times used to be copper mines. But i think it is a national park now so they will not let me dig there ha ha ha

we have but it is not cheep. i'm not planning on smelting tons of that. so i will see.

bronze, aluminium, copper, brass. I wish i could smelt steel but not sure if i have the resources for that. My dream is to cast my own anvil :-) but 120KG of smelting steel is no joke. Not sure that there is a big enough smelting plant in Israel for that.

I do not argue with that. It is in the to-do list.

Thank you but you answered the original question which was referring to a different (original) forge. The two forges i posted on January 5 are my current forges and they work extremely well. In fact i managed to melt some material i put on the smaller forge (got distracted). Ribbon burner is on my to-do list. Now i'm playing with a small (1/2") fan blown burner i built for a smelting furnace. (very small one). Thanks, Mike

just to wrap it up, here are my two gas forges at the moment. one with ceramic fiber blanket soaked with rigidizer (i do not like the outcome so i ordered rutland dry mix patch. saw on their website that it can hold up to 1500ºC). The bigger one is made of isolation bricks and refractory cement. the top is not connected to the floor so i can play with it as needed.

You are right. I decry the importance of it and i'm sorry for that. I need to "re-configure" my small furnace and when i do that i will use a isolation cement or coat the blanket. Not sure what kind of material to use for the coating. Cement? Thanks, Mike

Hello. It been a while since i logged into this forum. Here are my current forges. (And yes, i have a kwool without refractory layer. will be address on the next rebuild) Both of those forges works great. I'm really happy about them. Soon i will build my third one and a smelting furnace :-) BTW, i removed the flip doors. I'm using a isolation break at the moment. easier to handle and safer i think.

I made a mistake. it was not galvanized steel. my fault. anyway i removed the galvanized flare and replaced it with stainless steel one. about the idolation i use. i use two type of bricks. ceramic brick and they supposed to be very good quality. not the best but definitely not the worst. i think that they give better isolation then blanket but they are much more expensive and less durable. the floor bricks are heat resisting bricks that has more durability then the ceramic ones. on my new forge i will use a ceramic blanket and on top of it those bricks as floor. i can try and get the commercial name if it is any interest for you. Mike

Ok some more input. I managed to get up to 1020 degree Celsius. but with 1.5 bar. not acceptable:-(. The forge losses lots of heat. i need to build a smaller and better one. Im a little upset but that the cost of learning. Compare to my 4x4 hobby, this is nothing :-D. I changed the burners to have a strait 1" stainless steel with nice thick wall. I also downsized the interior by adding more breaks but to be honest, on second thought im not sure that it was a good idea. it takes the breaks more time to get hot then air i think. It took me more then an hour to reach 1000 degrees. not acceptable but like i said, learning phase. My most concern about the burners was answered so now i just need to have a better frame and isolation to the forge. also a better door mechanism. I do not want to use breaks as door. Btw, i keep forgeting to write this, im not using propane. im using butane gas. we do not have propane as regular store gas. i do not know what are the difference between the two. Thanks and i will keep you posted on results. Mike

Hi all. and thank you very much :-) My forge "design" and burners supposed to be a copy of Uri forge that i saw and worked on in his shop. However, i might got the dimensions wrong, I did not took measurements of his forge. The idea, as i see it, for the opening in the front is that you do not need to open the whole door, unless you need to insert a really big piece. the front is also the exhaust. Just to remind you guys, i had a former forge that did not even had a door and it reached 1080 degree C. Same dimensions except that the former one was little bit lower. same isolation and same burners. i simply made it higher and with the door on the wider side then the narrow side. The burners are of Uri design and material. Except that on his he got a piece of stainless steel as the flare and i used a galvanized pipe flare that i saw on a thread here. I did used to have a piece of stainless steel on the bottom and i might changed it back to it (funny story about that). I even buy the isolation components from the same shop he does (and surprisingly it is very close to my workshop, relatively speaking). my isolation is up to 1500-1700 degree. Giving that i want my top heat to reach maximum of 1250 degree C i think i'm good. I do use ceramic wool blanket. It is 30mm thick. On the top i use 2 layers, on the front and back, one layer. I red what you all wrote and i accept it. i need to improve the isolation and design but my question remains, assuming that i want only 2 burners, what are my options? My goal is to have a large enough forge to put 8-12 bars of round 16mm diameter 25cm long pieces. I want to make tools. Thanks, Mike

Uri is my teacher. I will go see him but it will take some time. Small country but with twin little boys i do not have a lots of time. I did read some posts, this is how i got to know this forum. Anyway, my main problem is that the heat does not go over 750 degree C and that the burners shut off when i increase the gas pressure. I have a adjustable gas regulator. Thanks, Mike

I wrote that it is 39cm wide, 30 deep and 18cm high. The isolation is heat resisting breaks on the bottom and the left and right sides. The front, back and top are isolation wool. front and back 3 cm wide, top 6 cm wide (2 layers). I'm not talking about isolation. assume that the isolation is fine. I'm talking about volume. I have room to only 2 burners. Now either i downsize my dimensions or i enlarge my burners ((via bigger size of tubing or by adding a blower). Thanks, Mike

Hi all. This is my first post so please do not roust me too much. My name is Mike. I'm from Israel. I'm a beginner blacksmith. I have built my own coal forge, gas forge and power hammer. My question is regarding my gas forge. Like i said, i built a gas forge, 2 3/4 atmospheric burners. It worked nice (not great) but i had 2 issues. first one, i did not manage to get over 1080 degree C. The second is that the design was not optimal to what i need. I built it deep but low and narrow. Great for long objects but not so much for many items together. My new design is (interior) 18cm high, 30cm deep and 39cm wide and if i got it right, it is 21060 cubic cm which is about 1285 cubic inch. way way bigger for my two 3/4 burners. So my question is, what are my options? For start. i'm going to try and reduce the volume by adding a second layer of breaks on the side, which will reduce the volume to 14580 cubic cm (890 cubic inch). But i'm not 100% comfortable with this solution. What size of burners do i need in order to achieve welding temp ? 1"? which size of nozzle? (I'm using a gas equipment, not mig nozzles, now i got 0.8mm hole). Maybe a blower is better solution? Right now the forge does not go higher then 750 degree C and when i increase the gas pressure (i started at 0.2-0.3 bar and moved up to 0.7) the burners turn themselves off. Advice will be most appreciated. Thanks and sorry if this question was already been answered. I tried the search but English is not my native tongue and reading all the posts is hard for me. Referring me to the right article or post will be most welcome. Thanks, Mike.