Luke Rieman

The economiser arrived last night (strangely, I was checking the tracking at 10pm last night to see if it was due for delivery today, and saw it was already marked delivered 8pm. Went outside and it was sitting on the doorstep in the rain. Weird ). The hook has more of a groove to it than I thought so it might work, I'll go finish up the stand in a minute. I did think about running a wire around the base of the heating attachment, but I don't know how comfortable I feel about that. If the torch twisted, that connection is only finger tight and it doesn't seem totally implausible that the hook could loosen it. Doubly worse with a pilot light right next to it. I might use a cable tie between the O2 and fuel valves as there is a bit of a recess for it to sit in. I'm loving the propane heating tips I bought! #1P is such a beautiful, teeny, precise flame, I love it! And the #25P worked great for bending 12mm round yesterday.

I've recently bought a type 5 oxy propane torch setup and I have an economiser on the way. One thing I've realised is that with the single-flame brazing tips I have for heating, there won't be any part of the tip that will catch on the economiser hook and allow me to hang it securely. I've seen a lot of US guys on youtube with what looks like a little mini-hook on a hose clamp, but I can't find them anywhere or even any reference to them. Also, my shank isn't the nice all-brass type with a round cross-section, so I don't even know if one would fit on mine. What am I missing here? Surely everyone needs to hang their torch at some point?

Thanks, I think this may be my issue as the forge was barely even hot before the stuff had turned sticky. I'll try getting some which actually states bentonite on the label, but otherwise I guess I'll stick to hard firebricks. They're just so expensive here for what they are

I read on here that some people use bentonite cat litter in a tray as a sacrificial refractory when forge welding, so as not to destroy the floor of the forge with flux. I tried some (Perlax brand, I think?) It was the cheapest and claims to be 100% Fuller's earth aka bentonite, hopefully. I found, however, that the top layer fused together at normal forge temps, and at forge welding heat the whole thing melted into goopy lava. Did I do something wrong or is this the expected outcome? I still managed to get some okayish welds but it wasn't much fun trying to extract the workpiece from the goop every year. I had tried previously using coke in the same tray and this worked well. The coke I have is low quality though and I don't have proper fume extraction so that isn't a long-term solution for me.