BrassHoarder9000

My name is Cory, I updated my profile a wee bit more as Frosty suggested. That being said thank you guys for replying so quickly with good information. A little reasoning behind this post is over the years I looked through various posts there are a handful of names that start sticking out to someone. Those being the like of Frosty, Wayne Coe, Mikey(whatever sequence of numbers following his name) and a few others. So most folks have suggested using the rigidizer but I could have sworn I had seen Wayne Coe mention that he doesn't bother with using because he uses castable on top of the blanket. The problem is I haven't been able to find that exact post since I first read it to try an gain some more information from it. With Wayne playing a big role on offering great information for everyone I have to respect his opinion on forge building and so this is why I had questions regarding it since so many other people say rigidizer is a necessary component of forge building. Anyways I appreciate what you gave me and I will go ahead and buy or make some rigidizer to treat the blankets for my build. I do have some other questions if anyone is so inclined to offer there advice and that is 1) how big of opening and exit do you folks personally choose to use on a propane tank diy forge. 2) I haven't decided whether I want a square interior or a D shaped interior is there any benefits to one over the other is it just personal preference? 3) Lastly when mounting the burner I read in one post to go 2 inches left or right of the top centerline of the forge but as I was scrolling through pictures looking at other folks builds I saw several with the burner smack dab in the center pointing down and the also saw several with the burner coming out at the 3 o'clock position (or 90°). I know you want to try an get a bit of a swirl from your burner if you can but wasn't sure if these alternative mounting choices are better, personal preference, or had to do with what type of work they were doing such as knife making, blacksmithing, decorative smith's....etc etc. May all your hammer arms stay strong.

Alright everybody this is my first post on ifi after lurking and gathering knowledge like a dog gathers fleas. The problem I've run into is sometimes there are far too many answers and trying to determine who is right or wrong or even partially right/wrong. What I am looking to find out is everyone seems to be of the general consensus that you have to rigidize ceramic blanket and while I agree with that statement I've seen a few times where folks have said they skip the rigidizer step because they are covering the blanket with refractory. I recently bought most everything to do a forge build, I got kast-o-lite 30, 1.5" ceramic blanket and plistex, and was wondering if I needed to get rigidizer for it or if I'll be fine coating the blanket with just the kast-o-lite? Any and all answers and opinions are welcome and appreciated thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.