Charlotte

Congratulations on your success!  That is a  very nice picture an a good taper on the scroll!   Good Work!

you would do well to contact these people http://www.anhrefractories.com/   try to call your nearest location by phone and ask them for the answer,  They have gotten very picky about revealing product performance specs over the internet;   If you get and answer from them looks for an equitant on line or just get them to ship to your address.   They will work with business licensed folks but individuals not so much.  I deal with a location 40 miles from my house by walking in their front door.  If I wasn't on their carpet they would not talk to me. (it was different 15 years ago  )

It would be interesting to see some of the tools used by native craftsman use for their carpentry and carving.   What I've seen in films and photographs has been tantalizing but not really detailed enough for reproduction.  Your reproduction is fascinating and resembles some of the photographs I've seen 

Very pretty and graceful  design! 

latticino  Thank you for the information    It follows along with an experiment that I had planned.    That  is a very interesting link and will give a great boost to this discussion/

2 minutes ago, ianinsa said:

Vaughn , it may seem like I'm spoiling for a fight, which I'm not! Yet your comments are very Eurocentric (although you are American)   vast parts of the world and millions of people (not some arbitrary 1%) still rely on the local blacksmith. You refer to the civilized world? The middle east has been civilized for eons (not that you'd think it the way many of them are currently behaving) yet the blacksmith (well metalsmith) is still very relevant and is by no means a 'dying ' trade. The Affluent and there are still many of those and the hotels that serve them are still discerning customers. You might be surprised if you got the 'blacksmith spend' in the USA alone if you looked at upmarket residential and not at 'kings ' clientele.

I agree with this perspective.  In fact even in the US in present times blacksmiths are often sought out to make or repair parts of existing equipment that are no longer available on the local market.   I have seen farmers bring the cutting edge of plows brought to a blacksmith to repair and sharpen rather than pay the cost of a new one from the dealer. 

I never did well in school Until I got 7th grade.  I was science addict from the earliest days I can remember.  I always liked the big toys the expensive toys.  The one's I wasn't supposed to touch.!   You know the toys that actually did something like saws, real hammers, screw drivers axes. 

When I started algebra, and geometry and biology and General science things were looking up for me.  English now that was another matter until they got over that grammar/spelling  kick.  Last two years of High school were good enough to get me a scholarship for my first year of college. 

I was lucky.  My dad refused to pay anybody for anything he thought he could do himself. He was a talented carpenter, mechanic, draftsman who couldn't afford engineering school in the 20's so he went to work in railroad freight management and became and Industrial developer. When he looked around for an extra hand or a good pair of eyes there I was.  I spent as much time in the garage or the basement with him as I did in books or cooking.  ( My mother despaired of ever teaching me to sew with needle and thread. But sewing machine that was a different matter) 

I was promoted to Laboratory supervisor in my longest job mostly because I was the person that understood how the machinery and the plant worked as well as the lab instruments and could fix and/or diagnose the problem when things went south.  For what ever reason I seem to have a talent for understanding how things work and how to fix them when they don't

I blacksmith weld etc. because I've loved hot Iron since I saw the steel mills in Pittsburgh PA dumping slag in the distance in the evening. I used to see it every night that I played outside.  

Note on bell reducer.  I used them extensively in building blast burners  for boiling crawfish, shrimp, and steaming crabs.  A tradition here in Louisiana.    The advantage is that the treads create a turbulence at edge of the flow  which allows the use of a shorter pipe under some condition and keeps really high volumes from blowing  of the end. 

One of the reasons my burners were popular was that I could throw a really big flame that wouldn't blacken the bottom of the pot  Admittedly the big ones sounded like a jet engine revving up.

Alas,  I can't give more details.  I was given that advice by the Company vendor rep when I learned to weld with gas.  Most of my gas welding was doing small ornamental assembly and repair.  On the half dozen times I gas welded anything bigger than 1/16  I slavishly followed that recommendation.  Since my divorce, when I lost half my stuff, I've used acetylene for welding and propane for cutting.  I was never a big time job  weldor. A lot of what I know is from being in the industry and insisting that if I was responsible for some of it I should have hands on knowledge. It is much easier to QC results if you understand on a physical level what the technician had to do and how the product/equipment works. 

All I remember of the conversation was that___ since you are using a bigger tip than you would for acetylene and generating more total BTU  at  a slightly lower temperature you need to make use of the heat to get the job done.

These days I use mig for the same jobs and now that I have finally gifted my self a tig will retire the acetylene cylinder unless I find some one that insets I repair something where it sits.  

Dread Locks?

Forges can be built around thin air.   Since that is galvanized I'd forget that except as a slack tub and build a brick pile or inswool /kast-0-lite forge.  There are many posts in this section about forges built a number of different ways.

Mikey98118   I said silver braze with deliberate intent.  Silver alloy manufactured by STOODY for High pressure stainless steel tubing carrying hydrogen at 4000 PSIA with no failure of joint or leak for years.   The Joints were only replaced with orbital welded autotig welded systems because of the requirement for absolute purity.

Trust me on the MAPP  It was a superior fuel but was shoved off the market by the stupidity of the supplier that retained control of it  and tried to establish a monopoly.  Blazer was close enough in function compete.   A secondary problem is that petroleum chemists raised the pricing after they found other applications for methyacetylene/Propadiene which returned more profit.  MAPP's real strength was in forehand horizontal welding.   I know that MAPP was discontinued.  I know I was there.  I worked for the corporate entity that controlled MAPP though its holdings.  When It went down I acquired several 25 gallon tanks that I shared with friends that need fuel for several purposes.  There were a lot of crawfish boiled over MAPP gas In Louisiana.

You should know that the international company  that owned MAPP went out the cylinder gas business and sold all of its cylinder gas subsidiaries.

Another case of corporations being run by people that have more interest in their own pockets than commitment to the products and the people  that produce them. I sat in meetings with some of those Swinging D_____s  and heard their thinking.

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

What kind of oxy propane torch are you referring to Mike, things like the old Victor conversion tip junk?

The oxy propane rig out in my shop outperforms oxy acet in every operation but gas welding of steel. Absolute temp is lower but BTU/sec is orders higher. The #5 heater tip will melt a cubic inch of steel in under 13 seconds while the equivalent oxy acet #5 rose bud hasn't run the temper color in the test coupon blue.

Check out Harris alternative fuel torch and have a dealer give you a demo of the oxy prop rigs.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Totally agree with Frosty's  experience.    Mapp gas if you can find it was capable of steel welding;   I learned to weld in the bad old days.  Today I use propane for anything that doesn't require  acetylene;    The Turbo torch system using propane was good for high temp silver braze of stainless steel.    I must say however that oxy/acetylene is still the best training for Tig.  Tig is a great system but as others have noted not for the faint hearted or inexperienced.   At 70 coming  I find that I don't quite have the steadiness to do a really good job with tig  these days,   Not enough use  and too expensive to practice I guess.

Hmmm,  Strength?   That word has several different applications to objects made of steel.   How does he mean strength?   Strength in bending?   In shock resistance? Hardness?  Abrasion Resistance?

If you haven't done destructive  testing how can you make any statement about the suitability of your product?   What steps have you take to ensure that the coil springs you used didn't have any internal flaws? ( One coil spring I came across had a cold shut through the length.)   Used springs often have stress cracks that show up after forging the experts here have emphasized?   ( I often think used springs came my way  for a reason.)   Btw how do you know for certain that  the alloy you used was what you thought it was?  How did decide how to heat treat?  

Just a cautionary group of questions.  The professionals on this site have often remarked that it takes years to build a good reputation but only one bad result to break it.

Mikey98118    Just so you know when people ask me about burner design   I recommend your book.   I have a copy of it on my book shelf.  I don't share my system because although it works for me it is one that I developed as a hybrid system.  Your  books burner builds should produce predictable results in the hands of competent builder. I don]t think any better praise than that can be had. 

I began building  my system quite a while before your book was published.   If I had seen it first I might not have developed mine.

Recuperative builds are effective and efficient when you just recover heat by an exhaust gas incoming air heat exchanger.   Does require a little experiment to get right.  One problem that needs to be solved by the user is developing a burner system that allows stable ignition on cold start.  The Sandia forge had an even greater problem in that they wanted high heat at relatively high altitude for the US.  

18 minutes ago, Mikey98118 said:

Charlotte,

In the first place, congratulations on accomplishing a very difficult task; especially if you are getting the resultant gas jets long enough. But a twist drill will leave internal scarring in the hole, which will interfere with with laminar flow in the gas stream (a definite no-no). You will find capillary tube to b e more efficacious, and a lot easier to deal with in future.

I find drilling to be a piece of cake with years of practice.  And second I don't care if it is laminar or not since I create a critical orifice.  Typically operate forge at 25 to thirty psi. With one set up I used 40 psig.   I have my idiosyncratic design well in hand.   I don't share my design because it relies on understanding how flames work and how read the results of adjustments.  My first job was running gas fired annealing furnaces for a major steel mfg.  so I got a close up hands on experience with Industrial practice. That was in the days before digital controls  

Forging lengths of rebar square is a major effort and not really attractive when finished.  Also you really don't know what you are working with;  Recently had the occasion to repair a porch built by my father.  In the process I had to cut some rebar anchor pins.  I cussed the whole time because the rebar used was as hard as the hardware store cold chisel I started using. I finally got one from my kit that I had hardened my self to start cutting.  Ended up the concreate the pins were in gave up before the pins did,

Point being: The best way to use rebar is to  take advantage of its texture and/or strength  as a contrast to dimensional stock. From personal experience  drilling forged  rebar can be a major headache.

I'm sure other's have their own unhappy experiences with rebar.   There is a reason that it is cheap and disappears  in concreate,

Forging lengths of rebar square is a major effort and not really attractive when finished.  Also you really don't know what you are working with;  Recently had the occasion to repair a porch built by my father.  In the process I had to cut some rebar anchor pins.  I cussed the whole time because the rebar used was as hard as the hardware store cold chisel I started using. I finally got one from my kit that I had hardened my self to start cutting.  Ended up the concreate the pins were in gave up before the pins did,

Point being: The best way to use rebar is to  take advantage of its texture and/or strength  as a contrast to dimensional stock. From personal experience  drilling forged  rebar can be a major headache.

I'm sure other's have their own unhappy experiences with rebar.   There is a reason that it is cheap and disappears  in concreate,

I LIKE IT!

Maybe my chem is rustier that I thought but I don't see in the cited article any direct reduction of Cr2 O?   any numbers and carbon.  Carbon is mentioned in reduction with chlorine to prepare the chloride.

In times past I've played with the oxide messing about with ceramics.    I respect that your formula can works just not the way you suspect it does.  I really believe that the carbon + the borax may help solvate the manganese and chromium oxides and eliminate the formation of additional oxides to permit fusion.

ThomasPowers    I totally agree that it is possible to produce decent work out of a propane forge.  The remark is directed at  the learning curve of propane forge operation.  The beginner is likely to  have problems in getting and keeping a forge tuned for a nice balance between too much reducing and to close neutral/oxidizing. 

Hydrogen explosions created by superheated steam an Iron are part of the history of the steam era.

7 minutes ago, Buzzkill said:

I think I'm about done beating this dead horse on here, but I'll give it one more shot to see if I understand it correctly.

The combustion of both propane and methane are net exothermic reactions including the formation of water vapor.  So, if I understand what you are saying, after it forms the water vapor then absorbs more heat than was given off when it was created and whisks it out of the forge, thereby reducing the flame and forge temperature.  This would also happen with propane, but to a lesser degree due to the lower ratio of water molecules formed when burning propane compared to methane. Is that what you've been telling me?

In short form yes.

I have always thought the level of manganese coupled with a similar amount of chrome was the cause of the problem in forge welding. Evidence ?  Not here

I repeat: One of the nasty things that water vapor does <aka Steam> is combine with iron molecules to produce black oxide iron oxide and hydrogen  which then combines with atmospheric oxygen.   In days to Steam power  some terrible explosions were tied to the production of hydrogen from the contact of steam with red hot Iron.  The reaction of steam and Iron is one of the reasons it is hard for a gas forge to produce the nice slick looking forge work that is so easy to produce with out thought in a solid fuel forge. 

ie more water more problems

The Net   reaction is to be less efficient.

I'm not a knife guy so this suggestion may seem off the wall but: 

1) grind the thickness of the blade back to the start of the thumb cut out at the same angle as the guard.

2.) reshape the reground portion to a width which will make a decent handle,

3.) Tig weld or silver solder mild steel or bronze pieces to reinforce the handle, 

You would lose the finger cut out but save the majority of the blade