TimB

I just made a drift out of a framing hammer...but I ain't used it yet You guys think that might be adequate?

Exactly right Thomas, Thanks for clarifying. And just to add to what you said, CO (carbon monoxide) is a product of incomplete combustion. Any smoldering fire, or any case where a flame impinges on metal (say a blade or billet or in my case a furnace heat exchanger wall) or where there is insufficient oxygen (or even too much) mixed with the fuel to complete the oxidation (combustion) process from C to CO to CO2, will produce CO. An O2 depleted environment like a closed up garage, can compound the CO production as less and less O2 is available in the same amount of air to completely combust the same amount of fuel. Just an FYI for our gas forge folks, CO contains 2/3 the BTU's of the original fuel, so it's to our advantage to tune the burners to a minimum CO production, for fuel saving reasons as well as safety. I have seen nat gas burners go from producing 100ppm CO to producing 1000's ppm CO with just a tweak of the air flow adjustment (done it myself ) . Table I. Effects of Carbon Monoxide Exposure and CO Exposure Limits PPM CO Exposure Effects of Exposure to Carbon Monoxide at this level Source/comment 0 ppm No effects, this is the normal level in a properly-operating heating appliance No carbon monoxide should be detected in residential properties. Possible brief technical exceptions occur. 9 ppm Maximum allowable short term exposure ASHRAE 10 - 24 ppm Investigation needed to find source; Health effects on humans uncertain. 25 ppm Maximum allowable TWA exposure limit OSHA. Used in personal CO alarms. 35 ppm Maximum allowable workplace exposure limit for an 8-hour work shift NIOSH (40 hour work week) 50 ppm Maximum allowable workplace exposure limit for an 8-hour work shift OSHA (40 hour work week) 125 ppm Workplace alarm must sound OSHA 200 ppm Evacuate the area immediately. Exposure at 200 ppm of CO causes dizziness, nausea, fatigue. 400 ppm Evacuate the area. 3 hour exposure may be fatal. 800 ppm Evacuate the area. 2-3 hour exposure causes convulsions, loss of consciousness, death. 1600 ppm Evacuate the area. 6400 ppm Evacuate the area. 30 minutes of exposure causes convulsions, loss of consciousness, death 12,800 ppm Evacuate the area. 1-3 minutes of exposure causes convulsions, loss of consciousness, death http://www.inspectapedia.com/hazmat/CarbonMonxide.htm

Good point, all you guys had good points, thanks. I think I may have just figgured out a use for that old furnace blower in my garage... :)

Actually, I don't mind the smell, kinda like the smell of burned gun powder, and hamburgers. That's kinda the way I always thought about it too, but then I started wondering about the sulfur getting into my lungs, combining with water and forming sulfuric acid....FFWD>> a few years and the possibility of scar tissue left from sulfuric acid burns in my lungs sounded too much like what's going on with asbestosis and that stuff, so I figured I best look into it since I'll be 60 when my youngest gets out of high school....but then again, I just explained to a guy the other day that his dirty air filter was representative of what we breath in, in the same time period, and our bodies amazing ability to cleanse itself. Then again, I thought of the coal miners of yesteryear. Sure they died young, of blacklung, but that was after years of breathing green coal dust...so I figgured I best ask anyways cause I been told I think too much... :blink:

Been surfing the forum the last few hours (mostly waiting for my dialup connection) looking for info on how coal smoke affects the lungs--is it a cumulative effect, minor irritant, does the smoke effect differ from green coal to coke smoke? Found some links that looked good but they just took me back to the forums front page. I have my forge set up in the wood shed these days, which amounts to a roof 10' above me, two walls made of old 1 x 6 boards 8' tall (pretty airy) one wall made of stacked cord wood, and an open side. Ventilation couldn't be a lot better, but on still nights the smoke can still build up in there so that I smell of coal when I come inside. Frequently I can feel some heaviness in my chest after a few hours of hammer time. Haven't experienced any side effects like headaches, shortness of breath, or anything like that, but I did start wondering about it.

I know I'm a couple years late for this topic but I'll throw in my "home remedy" because it works amazingly well. Take a raw potato, cut it in half, and use the knife to scrape the "meat" of the potato into a pulp, enough to cover the burn area. Let the pulp poultice sit on the burn till it turns grey (20 - 30 min) then wash off. reapply if necessary, but I've never had to. Takes the sting out of the burn and seems to do something for the healing process too, I don't know what, but I've had bad 2nd degree burns that started to blister almost immediately and the scraped raw potato poultice stopped the blistering, cooled the burn, and I all but forgot about it. Works better than aloe. While I'm waiting for the poultice to work, I generally slice up the rest of the spud, add salt, and have a snack.

I must be a meathead, why didn't I think of that!

You want your chimney to terminate two feet above the point where a ten foot stick held horizontal, would contact both the roof and the chimney at the same time. If you come to the peak of the roof before you reach the ten foot between point, then go just two feet above that. For some reason the pitch of the roof messes with the draft below that. That is industry standard in furnace installations in homes and such. I moved into a home where the wood stove chimney did not meet this standard and I tried outsmarting the physics but I just couldn't get my stove to draft till I rebuilt the chimney to code.

Just wondering if there would be dangers involved in useing steels that had a chrome plating on them for forging. Dangers along the same lines as galvanized metals.

There you go, we seem to be in need of some anvil shaped meatloaf pans. Gave my wife the recipe today and she agreed it sounds good

Me to. Last Christmas I gave away some stuff I made and what was really cool was I could say, "...that used to be a....."

that is cool Sukellos

Thanks John, I was wondering about that. I was thinking of trying that but I wasn't sure if I'd be better off not risking damaging these ones...but then again, I made them, I can make other ones too if I need to, and most likely will anyways.

Tonight I learned a couple more things. As I stood in front of my coal forge, I started thinking about some of the books I'd read, and it occurred to me that master smiths not only knew how to heat metal and bang on it, but also how, when, where, and why to place each stroke where they wanted it. I just stood there in awe a while, in front of the fire and almost burned the piece I was working on. My hats off to you guys. As I was using the tongs I formed for my 7 yr old, I learned that that good idea I had while forming the jaws on them was not such a good idea. I made the jaws as two angle iron pieces would fit together when stacked, figuring that a 3 point hold would grab most diameter rods, depending on what size was being used or drawn to, but the 3/8" rod I was working with kept jumping out of the tongs. Think I'll re design them.

Or maybe just a tiny orifice for now in sub-freezing temps, that way it'll bleed as it thaws.

Another trick you might try, if you can, is to run the psi in the tank higher than you need, then regulate the psi coming out of the tank, so that the psi in the hose is less than the psi in the tank. Water vapor precipitates out of air relative to its pressure and temperature. An air drier (refrigerated unit)--good idea BTW-- dries the high psi air by cooling it below its dew point--at that psi. a lower psi would lower the dew point temp. If you had your compressor on a tank large enough for the high psi air to cool below its dew point and precipitate some of the moisture it held out of it, then lowered the psi as it entered the hose, the relative dew point temp. would be lower still in the hose and no water should precipitate out while in the hose.

I have a question I run into in my trade, and I was wondering if someone here might have some insight into how Copper pipe might change character---or something. I have noticed, in the HVAC and boiler piping (Both steam and water) that frequently when I'm called on to replace coils, or fix a leak in copper piping used for steam that it is more difficult to clean the old copper pipe sufficient enough to get the soft solder to flow correctly. It really seems to require an aggressive cleaning, beyond what is required to just "shine" it up and remove the surface oxidation layer. Might anyone have a guess as to what happens to copper that might cause this?

I was wondering if the term "Gun bluing", which refers to a layer of rust resisting oxidation on a gun barrel, was once a reference to the temper a gun barrel was brought to? Which leads to another question, are the temper colors actually oxidation that would resist rusting?

can't wait to hear about them. :D

How about throwing the dutch oven in the wood stove for supper when the power went out. I use a propane torch to make coffee in my service van Mebby thats just redneck

Enjoyed reading this thread. Learned a few things too. Made my first blade the other day--not a usable one, just mild steel I had laying around, but I wanted to practice a bit and try the shape, and width a particular diameter bar would make. I got a lot to learn, but I'm having fun doing it. I am beginning smithing for much the same reasons you seem to be Old Boiler, I want a decent steel blade, and so far it seems, smithing fascinates me. I don't have a lot of money so I started simple. I'm an HVAC service tech, with an emphasis on boilers, so I have collected a lot of burner type junk laying around the house--just not enough time to assemble it yet. I made a coal forge to start with, out of the top 2" of a propane tank, unscrewed the valve and put a piece of 3/4" pipe in its place. I run compressed air from my air compressor, to a regulator at the forge which allows me to regulate the air flow / heat as needed. For now it seems to work well, but it was a quick way to get a fire going with the junk I had laying around, so I could start learning some of the basics, like, how to not pick up the metal by the hot end, how to not pick up the metal by the cold end when it's been in the fire long enough to get hot on that end too, and how to not do a hot cut with a chisel so complete that the cut end flies across the room and lands on my air hose and burns it in half before I can yell, "OH ----!!!". :o

Gee guys...I'm starting to think I fit in around here

Schrader is out of business, so I can't get new doors unfortunately, and I undertook this process because the original cast iron doors were on it, and they were warped bad enough that over sized rope didn't work to seal them either. I like the heat shield idea though. Mike, sounds like we got the same size stove. The only one I ever seen that might have been bigger (Schrader) was an octagon or hexagon shape. (I welded a water loop in mine in the 8" space between the top of the door and the top of the stove, and turned it into a boiler, that's why I don't want to replace it.) It looks pretty cool with that 14" x 26" sheet of red iron on it too. Newbie, I had that idea too, I rimmed the sheet with inch and a half angle iron, 1/4" thick thinking that would help keep it from warping, but it did anyways. Would simply pressing it back flat work, or would it just cause stress that would wind up popping again, like the old cookie sheets used to do?

Awesome, If yer wife owns an electric razor, and you don't... ya' might be a redneck

I made a door for my schrader wood stove, out of 3/8" red iron from an I beam. The second time, I did a fairly good job welding the angle iron around the edges without warping it, and it worked great for a couple years, but I just noticed tonight that it's warped enough now that it dosen't seal very well any more, and I don't know that I have the time or money to do it again, nor the wood supply to keep the house warm when the sub zero temperatures hit, if I don't get a door on it that seals. Why is 3/8" red iron warping when the 1/4" sheets the stove is made out of don't? By heating the door on the convexed side, over the warpage areas, can I straighten the door? How does this work? It evidently does because the concaved side of the door is toward the fire side, but how does heating metal, which tends to expand it, shrink it more than its original length?