Dan Bance

I'm interested in what you find out. Producing a viable oil burning forge has been quite a challenge.

Kiln shelf is expensive. My floor is hard firebrick and I built the forge so it's easy to replace.

Today in the shop I had my first successful forge weld. (and there was much rejoicing). No, it's not photo worthy. Just some badsaw blades that I got cheap (my steel supplier sells their waste blades for $0.75/pound). Stacked together, bound with some wire, and a mild steel rod welded on for good measure as a handle. Not pretty, the far end of it has some delamination issues, but it is ultimately a single piece of steel.

That's about 1.5 gallons per hour. I run my forge at .5 gallons per hour (which is probably still excessive). Liquid fuels are difficult to make a satisfying forge with. And you need to run them lean until the forge comes up to temp or they can smoke like crazy. But, once you've got a viable forge built, they're kinda nice. On the other hand, I could have bought a lot of propane for what I spent building my current forge (and I still want to change some things). A lot of trial and error went into it.

I'd love to see your design. I've spent quite a few hours developing an oil fired forge that works well. A lot of trial and error.

I wish I'd done a google map search of "farrier supplies" sooner. There's a place 45 minutes away that has all manner of equipment plus classes (that I still have yet to visit).

Sign everything. Every piece of furniture I build gets marked. Every painting I've made is signed (and more recently, dated). It's fascinating to look back 20 years later and see the evolution of your work. Even things like a pair of tongs. Make a mark. You can always make a different mark later. You can get a set of letter/number punches for $20 and that's fine place to start.

It was a fine day in the workshop. My original ASO, in use for the past year, got an update today! I saw a large bar of A2 tool steel on the off-cuts section at my steel supplier. $1.20 per pound. My old ASO was a 45 pound block of cold rolled steel. No rebound. My hammer bounces off the new top. I have a larger, heavier plate for the bottom that will take the total weight up to about 100 pounds, but I need a bigger stump first.

I have a 2 burner Majestic. Doesn't get hot enough and the stock burner runs way too rich. There's no adjustable choke on the air intake. It's poorly insulated. All of these are fixable problems, but if you're going to spend $400 on a new forge, it ought to work correctly out of the box.

Welcome from the other side of the world. That's a big forge, but based on the measurements given, your math is correct. My forge is also 18", but a rectangular box that's a third that volume (4" x 6" interior, 3" x 5" opening at each end that can be closed off by insulating firebrick. It's bigger than I need and excessively well insulated. If I were building it again, I'd probably cut it back to 14". Maybe add another inch of Kaowool. You'll shrink your volume considerably. Volume is used as an estimate for BTU needs, but it's really a function of surface area, insulation, and the size of your openings at the end.

I appreciate the advice. I've read some of your previous posts on the topic. I plan on doing a complete write-up on it once I've got everything working. I've got a big horizontal fuel tank such that I should only see a change in fuel level of about half an inch per hour. Mounting that close enough in height required finding a scrap of very tall I beam at my steel supplier. I would like to setup a pump/return system to a miniature tank so instead of refilling a 5 gallon tank periodically, I can just set an oil drum nearby and never have to deal with it. As it is, I should only see a 10% change in fuel output over the course of 4 hours. The Delavan nozzles are designed to run at 3-5 PSI. They're calibrated at 4 PSI and 4 inches of lift. At that range, they produce a fantastic fine mist of fuel. I ran it successfully tonight on kerosene and once I got the air/fuel flow rates adjusted, wow did it get hot. It's been a long journey to get to this point. Now that I've got most of the bugs out, I think it's time to rebuild parts of the forge, particularly the shell and fuel inlet. It's a huge upgrade over my previous under powered and under insulated propane forge.

I've been working on an oil burning forge. My inner shell is hard firebrick for the floor (because that's easy to replace) and kast-o-lite 30 for the upper shell. I'm very interested in what you're using as your burner. I've been using Delavan siphon nozzles and I think I'm close to a working burner. There's been a lot of trial and error. Mostly error.