Hello,
After several months of scouring the IFI forums I decided to dive off and make my own forge and burner. A little about myself, I live in North Florida and am a mechanical engineer by education. I was drawn to actually try my hand at blacksmithing due to the science of materials I learned in college. I've always been fascinated with the craft but never really considered it feasible until recently.
So without further ado, here's my creation.
The first image is just the internal cavity. The forge is ~350 cu in. It has two 1" layers of rigidized inswool, an approximate 0.5" layer of cast-o-lite 30 and a final coating of HTC-100. I added frontal railings to support fire bricks which allow me the option to close off the front opening if I needed.
I forgot to take a pictures of the final burner product, but I decided to try my hand at a 3/4" "Mikey Burner" with some success. Its not exact and I apologize but my machining skills in my mind surpassed what my shop and my actual skill allowed me to do.
All in all, I think it turned out fairly well. The primary design change in a second rendition is the burner port location. I would move the burner port so that it fires in from the right side tangent to the top surface so that the flame wraps around the left side versus an attempt of coming in tangent with the right side of the oval inner flame face. It impinges too hard on the roof of the forge as it currently sits. I'm also looking at larger propane bottles. I hooked it up to that small 20 lb'er as my 40 lb was empty.
Anyways, sorry for the book but just wanted to share my experiences thus far and say thanks to the wealth of knowledge the members here at IFI have shared. It has truly been an exciting venture so far!
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