Being new and unsure to forge burners and forges in general, i looked for commercially available propane burners through various online stores. Unable to find anything
like what I was expecting (as if I knew what I was looking for lol) I bought a couple of burners off of ebay from a guy in Texas that makes them. I then went to the hardware store and bought enough fire brick, angle iron and brass fittings to make my forge body. Fast forward a couple of weekends and I have "made my forge". The burners are, I believe, 1" i.d. spaced 9" center to center with a MIG tip of unknown size (not marked) acting as the jet being fed by 1/4" pipe fed from a 20 psi adjustable regulator.
The problem I am having is that the left burner runs steady with the choke sleeve in various positions. However, the right burner sputters on and off never staying lit or running steady with the choke sleeve in various positions. I also noticed that it takes quite a while for the file I was beating on to get to a bright orange, bordering yellow heat but it never gets hot enough to weld.
Being the attentive reader I am, I noticed in a lot of posts the requests for people to do some research before posting a problem. I have started my sifting through the posts
and just the little bit I have read so far I have noticed a few problems in my design/use.
1. I should probably not completely block off one end of the forge while its running because the spent fuel needs to exhaust somewhere and since the right burner has its opening blocked off, its causing the exhaust to back up and essentially blow out the flame
2. The burners should probably have bigger air intake openings. Currently, four 1/2" holes, 2 on each side of the burner.
3. The burners should probably be spaced closer together and closer to the center. Currently 9" center to center
4. Not real sure, but my brass feed tubes should be 1/8" pipe instead of 1/4" pipe as the goal is to increase fuel velocity and the current nipples aren't able to accelerate the propane enough?
These are my initial hypotheses and I am probably off base some.
ThomasPowers. to answer your question, I'm interested in all things blacksmithing with an emphasis on blade-smithing. I saw an episode of The Woodwright's shop on PBS and saw the host helping to make and install a new outer wagon wheel ring and I was hooked on the idea of forging and to a lesser extent fabricating.
