Frazer

Definitely keep us posted. Might be worthwhile to pick an appropriate existing thread and/or create your own in the Gas Forges section to share your progress. Threads are easier to find/follow than status updates and you might get more eyes on it.

They're pretty long, but there's a lot of helpful info in there from people much more qualified to give it than myself.

My understanding is that the burners heat up the forge and the radiant heat of the forge/contact with it heats up the steel, not the flame itself. So if you put the hard firebricks in there they take a long time to come up to temp (if they ever do) and in the meantime they are sucking heat out of anything they're touching.

I would look at getting some kaowool, rigidizer and kastolite 30 and lining the forge that way. You might be able to use some of the insulating bricks to take up some of the excess volume, but I would ditch the hard ones.

Just my 2 cents.

Good luck and welcome aboard!

I don't use a gas forge, but I see two likely causes:

1. It looks huge, subsequently that is a really large volume to heat up

2. There is little to no insulation. If those are hard firebricks they act as big heat sinks, drawing the heat out of the forge rather than keeping it contained within.

I'm sure the more experienced guys will be along soon to offer more help.

These topics are discussed at length in Burners 101 and Forges 101