jsurgeson

As per a very well known South African bladesmith, Titanium Damascus is quite easy to make, although for various legal reasons he calls it Ti-cume and it cost him $25 to work out how to do, so has no particular problem sharing his method with anyone. Method: 1. Use only traditional box method 2. Grade 2 & 6AL4V Ti layers 3. Remove all air as per box method 4. Heat as per normal damascus, soak a bit longer 5. Hammer very carefully, by hand or treadle, no air or mechanical hammer 6. Limited to random/ladder/pool&eye/twist Because the Ti becomes fluid like in the box, you can do the patterning while still in the box and hammer it flat again without loosing any material. Apparently a XXXXXXX to grind and work, but hey no one said it would be easy, but it is very possible and just as cheap as normal damascus to make.

Although not a touchmark registry, it is a knifemaker registry for touchmarks http://www.knifemakersdirectory.com/

That what makes it fun hey? B) As to the OP, yes it is possible to use a inverter DC stick welder as the base to a induction forge, as Phil says it is only part of what you need, you still need to do some fancy stuff to end up with a usable induction forge. Here is a link to a project based on an inverter. http://hildstrom.com...ndry/index.html

VFD's (variable frequency drives) the sort we put on our belt grinders to control speed, take either single or three phase AC and and with some fancy electronics, control the frequency and voltage of the AC to the motor and in turn, control the speed while maintaining torque, so I think you can :)

Found a fairly decent schematic for running led's off mains supply, but it will give you an idea how its done, and to what length they go to protect the led's.

I would think 1k1 1watt should suffice? Did a bit more reading, led's have a reverse breakdown voltage of about 5volts so with your 20 odd vac you might still have a problem.

Hi Phil This is probably much the same as what you are doing, 2 led's (diodes) in parallel, tail to head. I have my doubts about the way you are doing it, but then I am most often wrong, not that it stops me from sprouting anyway <_< This is what I was going to suggest, based on 24vac, choose a resistor value to limit the current to about 15 - 25mA, use a diode, like a 1n4148 or 1n4007 connect cathode to anode and anode to cathode. The diode prevents reverse voltage problems.

Hey Phil, you mentioned connecting a "blinky" led to your unit, the dc side will work fine with limiting resistor, but on the ac side you might need to use a diode as well to get it to work?

As Phil says, you are effectively putting a dead short on the charger when you connect both + & - to the blade, so any of the newer chargers will have some sort of short circuit and current overload protection. So your choices are, an old charger with no protection, which will try and keep on working even with a dead short on it, or build one as shown in the OP. I am afraid that if you are unable to build it as shown, then you are probably safer buying a dedicated unit. After all you are working with mains supply voltage, so be careful!

Hi Ian, ok then i will let you take care of "my" cylinder Yes I know Tim from RB he has in fact got my ribbon burner in his forge now. Yes i would be keen to meet up with you guys, let me know where & when

Thank for the feedback and comments guys. The last video is with 1 1/2" air feed, high cfm & pressure blower, gate valve, needle valve and greater distance between mixer and block. It hits welding temps and higher with ease.

Here's another video, I think he reduced the air a bit, turned the gas regulator pressure up to 20psi

Here is the video of burner running in Tim's forge Although it looks hot hell itself, it is still not burning the way it should I think. It is burning at least 50mm off the block, it also looks like not all the tubes are burning. In my original test, with low blower pressure, in open not in a chamber, it burned stable, right at the block, neat, short (+- 30mm) flames, all pilot holes burnt and were the same. If I increased the air pressure too much in relation to the gas, i could get the flame to burn way off the block, also lose one or two pilot holes. I think you have too much pressure in relation to the gas, turn your regulator pressure right up, and use the needle valve to control volume of gas. I wonder what some of the other gas burner experts think ?

Hey Ian howzit, yeah you right always nice to play. Still need to visit again so i can come collect "my" 50 ton cylinder that you are holding for me B)

Hi Have been wanting a ribbon burner for a while, unfortunately buying form the USA and exporting to Africa is not an option. So I thought that I would try and build my own, after reading some of the posts, especially the one where "prburner" talks about the Pine Ridge Burner, this is the burner I attempted to base my design on. I currently only use venturi burners in relatively small blade forges, so as don't have a suitably large forge, I also don't have a suitable blower. So this test was conducted using the air from a homemade commercial extractor fan, used to get it lighted and keep it burning and air from a compressor to force some air to simulate a bit of air pressure. The air gun on the compressor acts as air control, I ran the gas fixed at about 5psi, and gas adjustment was via a needle valve. Image below of burner, below that video of 1st burn (outside of chamber) Notes: 1. Burner block is isolated from plenum with fully welded baffle plate 2. SS metering tubes (thanks prburner) Things that are possibly wrong: 1. Distance between gas mixer and burner too short (should be 9x pipe diameter?) 2. Reduction from 2" blower feed to 1" at burner too great (maybe 1 1/4"?) One of my friend blacksmiths has taken burner to test in his large forge, he has a decent blower to test with. He sent me a phone image of it burning, he says his forge has never got that hot before, however is still does not burn correctly I think. The flame burns off the block, not like it does in my video, or like the PR burners do, which i think is the measure of success, if the burn looks anything like the PRB's then you are almost there. He is also using 1 1/4" piping which reduces down to 1" at the mixer "t". He feels that the air feed does not need to be 2", he might be right. Unfortunately I don't have images or video of it burning in his forge. I am building a chamber and another burner, when complete I will post video of it burning i correct chamber size, hopefully i will have found a suitable blower by then. Thanks for looking.