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I Forge Iron

WilCo

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Everything posted by WilCo

  1. It finally occurred to me to check for a subreddit about propane; there is a r/propane and it's a small and active enough sub that there are posts and answers but the volume is low enough that one can look get a sense of which commenters seem to know what they're talking about. And indeed someone asked this very question a couple years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/propane/comments/gvmhso/refill_coleman_camp_style_1_lb_disposable_bottles/ From that post, majority opinion seems to be that it is neither safe nor legal, which is about what I'd expect but hope springs eternal in the human breast. Flame King makes a refillable 1# bottle, in addition to the adapters and a kit of other things: Commercial link removed (Also says, "Certified by the DOT as legally and lawfully refillable and transportable. It is not safe or legal to refill and transport disposable 1lb tanks.") Oddly enough, the only adapter available individually is for a forklift tank, although the kit clearly has a different adapter and is shown with a vertical 20# tank. (Unlisted due to supply chain problems?) Another person mentioned that Manchester (mantank.com) makes one, although I don't see anything smaller than a 5# tank (which looks like an awesome size for camping for a night or two). Yes, they have to be. Liquid doesn't really compress (for mundane applications like this) but boils to fill the empty space to a given pressure, dependent on temperature. That's the same regardless of the volume of the container.
  2. Thanks folks for all of your advice, especially JHCC with the details about how to empty the little bottles and remove the valve. I am afraid my unnecessary details -- intended to be motivating examples, rather than the bigger-picture problem that can be answered instead -- have diverted attention from what I really want to know. I asked this question in the "Safety" section, so to legitimize it's continued existence there, permit me to rephrase my question: Assuming that someone has a valid need for using 1# bottles, what and how great are the risks of using an adapter to refill them from a normal refillable cylinder, like a 20# one? ThomasPowers has already mentioned that the 1# bottles "tend to leak with age"; this certainly sounds like a risk and I'd like to know more -- How long are we talking about? Is this from personal experience, industry/academic publication, Internet anecdote? My assumption is that it is not safe, so I would be especially interested in hearing from someone who actually does it.
  3. How do you make sure they're empty? Puncturing and putting them in the regular recycling is a disposal option but that scares the bujeebus out of me! I'm not sure what other adapter you mean. Yeah, I have one of these hoses. The trouble is that I have only one 20# tank and I like to use the torch for starting my forge and preheating my anvil, which I can't do with the forge burner already using the tank. (Not to mention the inconvenience of having to lug a 20# tank where it's needed. I do it occasionally, like today when my kid wanted to have a fire in the fire pit and all the wood was soaked.) So while the hose mostly eliminates the need for 1# bottles, it doesn't do away with it altogether.
  4. Is it safe to refill "disposable" 1lb propane cylinders? I see a number of adapters being sold for that purpose (which doesn't mean it's safe, just that it has't been enough of a problem to result in laws or lawsuits). Seems to require turning the source cylinder upside down briefly, which I understand one generally should not do because it prevents the pressure-release valve from working, but presumably refilling a 1lb tank does not require leaving it for hours in the hot sun. I would like to refill them mainly because there seems to be no way to dispose of them properly short of driving to a hazardous waste facility, a 40-60 minute round trip for me! (I suspect most people just toss them into the trash for curbside collection, even though you're really not supposed to.) It's cheaper to refill too, but thats not a big deal if there is much risk. (There is a trade-off between the risks of driving 40-60 minutes vs refilling; the former risk is "known" but the latter is not.) (As far as disposal options goes, I've seen Bernzomatic's CylinderSafe program, which just sends me to my local government body that handles these things, which I know already. This local body might have upcoming neighborhood collection events, assuming I find out about it before they actually happen. A lot of this stuff has been cancelled for the last couple of years.) I am talking about both the green Coleman tanks sold for camping, which are 1# 1 pound 16oz and the blue Bernzomatic bottles that are sold for torches, which are 14.4oz. (I am sure everyone knows what bottles I mean but for the sake of searchability, I thought I'd add the things I tried to search for.)
  5. Those look great Rashelle. Glad to hear you're making progress with your recovery; you were working left-handed when you taught the "Basics" class at Trackers I took Dec '19, pre-op I suppose.
  6. Yeah, unless I'm missing something, the NWBA forum is... quiet. And the rest of the stuff on the site requires membership, which would be worthwhile except that everything is closed at the moment. In fact, were it not for this shut down, I'd probably still be content with 2hrs/wk at Trackers, at my skill level. Right, and barring some other significant thermal difference, that's why I figured it better to use whatever is on-hand. I have assumed because that is the durability is the only difference I have read about, the thermal difference is negligible. For metalwork, practically non-existent. Prior to a couple years ago when I started restoring hand tools for woodworking, I had mostly sharpened knives and opened and closed computer cases. I have taken to heart the admonitions of yours and others here not to rely YouTube for forge-building, although I have paid attention to it for fabrication, since that is rather less specialized and (I hope) likely to be wrong (and to be amused when they make mistakes that even I can see--like putting teflon tape on brass propane fittings). That reminds me of something I learned from my father that took me years to un-learn: "Heat rises"... What he was misunderstood is that hot air rises. Like the difference in weight and mass, the distinction is rarely important for most everyday applications. For years I was confused and annoyed by the fact that most refrigerators had the freezer on top.
  7. Yes, I have; this one, right? While I like the idea of being able to open it to make the casting easier, I don't quite understand how the blanket is supposed to stay in the top. It also makes me nervous because it's a little different than the other descriptions and after all the mistakes I've seen people make and admonitions to follow well-tested designs and procedures by the participant here, I am hesitant to go with something like that.
  8. My neighbor wants to build one too; he used to do stock-removal knives and has a roll of 1" insulating blanket (I don't know if it's 6# or 8# and, while I know the difference is non-trivial, my guess is that it's not great enough to warrant spending extra when there is material on-hand). The coffee can I am speaking of is the Costco-size, which 3 lbs, not the <1 lbs grocery store size; I think 7" height, 6" diameter. Zoeller's coffee can is a 2 lbs. I'm not sure which size you're imagining since you mention bean cans. (I guess warehouse stores sell beans in sizes comparable to the big coffee cans, but that's not want comes to mind immediately.) Partly, I am also trying to decide where to source my materials -- there is a local outfit called High Temp Inc that has everything but kiln wash and a local potter's supply place that might have that (their site doesn't mention the brand). The former sells to the public but they're mainly oriented towards industry -- if I were just building one, certainly not, but building 2 -- maybe? For example, they sell Kast-o-lite 30 LI in 55 lbs bags. If I need 13-15 lbs per propane cylinder, then 55 lbs might not be crazy. Shipping cost for 30lbs would probably outweigh the savings of buying less quantity from elsewhere (i.e. Glenn). Thanks for the detailed instructions; I am sure I will have further questions of things that I am either totally missing or totally overthinking. I've been reading "Forges 101" and "Burners 101", and as I mentioned I now have a copy of Mikey's book (which, I understand based on his comments and differences from the threads, is dated in some ways) and a couple kiln-building books from my local library (which have proven to be a little useful but not as much as I hoped).
  9. Blah. Apparently I cannot edit my previous comment after some period, so I can't actually fix anything like I thought I could. I have ultimately realized the actual surface area of the inside does not matter, regardless of precision, because the insulating blanket is a sheet, so the circumference is what matters. I calculate <38" for a 12" circle, but now that I've gotten my hands on a copy of Mikey98118's book via inter-library loan, I see his build calls for 35", which I understand now because a 10" circle (which is 1" from both ends of the diameter) is ~31.5", so 35" is about the middle, which accounts for fact that the blanket is 1" thick. Another way to think about it is that the middle of a 1" blanket would be an 11" circle, which is a 34.5" circumference, so 35" adds a little padding, no doubt compensating for the >= 1.7% shrinkage of the blanket. I do, however, need to work out the volume for the Kast-o-lite, since Mikey98118's book does not cover that in the propane bottle build (and I haven't looked closely enough at the jeweler's furnace to compare volumes); he uses blanket cut to 11"-13" wide, because of the round ends, so if I assume 13" "height" for the cylinder shell, inner diameter 10", outer diameter 9" (1/2" thickness), I get 0 cu ft, rounding to the nearest integer :-) Seriously, ≈0.112265 cu ft (sorry, I don't what level of precision is appropriate here, so I'm just going to keep it all). 90lbs/cu ft * 0.112265 cu ft = 10.1 lbs just for the sides; plus some for the ends.
  10. Yeah, it might seem like that, but I can have a painfully literal mind, which, coupled with a terrible sense of proportions, can lead to ridiculous disasters... Like when I was in charge of buying the sausage for Oktoberfest in college... well, we ate well for many months afterwards. And then there was the time my friend and I were shopping for cranberries to make sauce fro Thanksgiving. If you wanted a good laugh, I could list a few things that I have been surprised by the dimensions of. If I miscalculated, say, 10x the amount of materials I need (don't think I can't screw up that badly!), I might throw up my hands at the cost or, worse, actually buy it and then felt like I had to hoard it "just in case", and add more junk to my already overcrowded-with-junk garage. Ah ha! This is the kind of thing I would have never known if you hadn't told me. Sometimes I miss the things that are obvious to other people. If I had gone out to measure it, I probably would have had to try several measuring tapes and sticks before deciding that everything was wrong, then another week for that obvious factoid to pop into my head. I try to be precise in planning, partly, because I know I will be sloppy in execution; I don't think that goes well with machining. You folks have gotten hung up on the number of decimal places I included, but that's just because that's what WolframAlpha gave me; rounding it would have been another step, which I cannot convince WA to do directly with the other calculation and with interruptions from kids coming in and messages from work, etc., it's safest to do the easiest, which is just copy the data as-is, and make adjustments later. In fact, the point of updating it is to not leave my foolishness on the floor where anyone can trip over it.
  11. About 3/32" thick, or 3/16" of the diameter cross-section, then. Estimating the body of the tank is 15", taking 3" off for the collar & foot from an approximate 18" height, we get: The internal surface area is 5.38772 ft^2. The external surface area (which just ignores the thickness) is 5.49779 ft^2. Given that the measurements of the tank are approximations in the first place, it is probably just as well to ignore the thickness, both for simplicity and building in a buffer of required materials by over-estimating. (I will update this as I collect data and work it out the calculations, reigning in some of my over-thinking as I go.)
  12. Does anyone have the internal dimensions of a 20 lbs/5 gal propane cylinder? I have found the external dimensions, 12" diameter & 18" height (and more precise measures by manufacturer), but the height I presume includes the collar and foot, and I have no idea how thick the material is, so I am not confident that I could get a reasonable estimate even with the bottle on hand until I have opened. Given the level of detail that I see people recording here, surely someone has measured and actually recorded for posterity these figures, but I am unable to find them, using either the board/forum's built-in search or Google with (and without) the `site:` operator. I am asking for the dimensions, rather than waiting until I've opened my tank and measuring it myself, because I am planning several forges and want to work out how much of the various insulating/refractory materials I need. "Several" because I am using a 3 lbs coffee can now with a torch but without any insulation, so it's really just a wind-break, and I want to get it insulated before I melt a hole in it. With a coffee can forge and a torch I can work out the process for installing the insulation without at the same time having to figure out cleaning and marking and cutting and fabricating the propane cylinder for shell and building the burner(s). Limiting the number of unrelated aspects that I have to work out before I have something I can test usually increases my chance of success (much like a "spike" or "tracer bullet" in certain agile software development practices).
  13. Have you considered using Wolfram Alpha for these kinds of computations? It's pretty good with formulas in as free-form text. In this case, for example, I used "cylindrical shell volume, height 13, inner diameter 7, outer diameter 8" and got the expected answer: 153.153, with a nice little graphic that shows me that it understood what I was asking, plus some other interesting bits of interpretation. It can also be used as a reference for formulas like this that you might not remember, like "cylindrical shell volume". I have not been able to convince it to do more complicated expressions, like "(cylindrical shell volume, height 13, inner diameter 7, outer diameter 8)/19.2". Or, my earlier attempt, before remembering that it would be called a "shell", I tried calculating the volumes of the inner and outer cylinders and subtracting them, which it would not do directly either.
  14. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely keep those in mind. I have had ongoing issues with RSIs for the last couple of decades (most of my adult working life), due in no small part to marathon sessions at a computer keyboard. I am much less fascinated with computers than I used to be, but I have replaced that with activities that still stress my hands, forearms & upper back. I often joke about taking up singing or soccer... In this case, though, it was caused mostly by using a <1/2 lb wooden mallet & chisels. I don't expect this to bother me for more than a week, if I can give it rest. (Resting is not easy though, because the rainy season is starting, and need to stand up both my smithy shanty and bodger's hovel before it really gets impossible to work outside without shelter.) Developing good hammer technique is one of my top priorities with my home setup. I had my wife compare my movements with diagrams of good and bad techniques from one of Alexander Weygers's books and she thought I looked OK, but I know such things require a good deal of conscientious practice before they can become automatic.
  15. ... if you know that the patina of copper is called verdigris.
  16. My initial interest in blacksmithing was to be able to make my own (hand) tools for (mostly greenish) woodworking & carving, although now that I have started, my interest in producing decorative and useful items and other tools is also growing. I also dabble in leatherworking, mostly sheaths or covers for tools. I started learning blacksmithing last fall (December 2019), with a 1-day introductory course at Trackers Portland, under the tutelage of the great Rashell. I was finally able to begin taking advantage of the weekly 2-hour open forge that Trackers offers in February and had done so a few times before everything fell apart. I had been considering a small home setup even before everything was shutdown (2 hours/wk isn't much time), so I am working on that now. I recently noticed that Trackers open forge time is going again, so I am hoping to be back there soon, although I have a bit of tendonitis at the moment. I have no background in metalworking, welding, etc.
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