Frosty

Ahh, and here I thought the gauge and bearing was a journal bearing pun. S'okay, lightening the spirits keeps us from getting cranky. You know sort of a mood Lifter. Frosty The Lucky.

No sweat I might hold you to your no promises though. The volume of the forge to the size and number of burners is probably the most critical ratio to account for. Insulation and basic burner type are factors too but it's the amount of heat generated in the volume that really counts. There are tricks for helping to contain and retain the heat say insulation, chamber layout and shape but those are for a little later. Give me a shout when you have time. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the gang live within visiting distance. Beautiful hammer. Frosty The Lucky.

How you orient your burners depends on a couple things: What you want the forge environment to be is probably the most important. A gas forge tends to heat everything that's even close to the door trying to get an isolated or spot heat is a problem. This makes orienting the burner perpendicular to a specific spot desirable. At least to a degree and presents problems. Orienting the burner on a tangent with one face of the liner to invoke a vortex distributes the flame and heat more evenly in the chamber. I prefer a tangential alignment but that's me. When a propane flame impinges a surface high energy chemistry takes place and most refractories degrade more rapidly than just temperature dictates. This is also true for fuel oil burners so I assume any hydrocarbon fuel air flame is pretty chemically reactive. This means how the flame impinges on the liner makes a difference. The closer to the center of the flame the more unburned fuel and air there is to react with other things it meets. Aiming the flame directly at a surface exposes the surface to the center of the flame where max heat is generated as is the most unburned chemistry. Impinging at a shallow angle means contact with the outside of the flame column where most of the fuel air has been burned and it's cooler. It's not that the flame is necessarily cooler but the impact zone is now stretched across most of the forge liner so it physically can't have the same effect chemically. Most tangential alignments are across the top one side to the other. This puts the work under an arch of HOT liner and maximizes exposure to hotness. Tristan has up draft burners ported through the floor aimed up one wall then across the roof. I've used his forges and they work very well. I was really surprised that nothing seems to fall into the burner. A burner flame aimed straight down onto the floor distributes heat in a circle from the center of impact. however, when you lay a piece of work in the flame the floor is now in a heat shadow so the forge floor loses heat without being replenished by the flame. The work doesn't absorb heat so well from the flame as it does from IR from the liner. Mike, other folk and I have talked about kiln washes and why before so I'll let that lay now. Frosty The Lucky.

Those look like fine scrolling tongs Louis. You have plenty of meat in the bosses and reins so they'll take good force in use. One picture shows a little nick/notch in one of the bosses you might want to fill that and dress it up as it stands it's a weak point and an initiation point for a failure. I like to make one bit smaller than the other on scrolling tongs as well as tapered like yours. It just gives me a wider range of curve I can turn with the same tool. All in all nice tools, well done. Frosty The Lucky.

That's better. What's the chamber volume? and what size burners are you using. PSI doesn't really mean that much, there are too many variables between your shop and anyone elses to mean much. A couple pics of it running will let me see what it's doing. one pic in the door before the forge is warmed up, one after it's warmed up and another across the door so I can see the dragon's breath. If you have a full range of fuel air adjustment with the choke tuning is handled something else is going on or not. Frosty The Lucky.

WHEW, thanks! Frosty The Lucky.

You need to share some details or any advice you get will just be wild guesses. For example I say, "my daily commuter only gets 13 mpg. What's wrong?" With that little info what possible reply could be useful? Frosty The Lucky.

Don't try to throw fresh cow pies. Frosty The Lucky.

Nice, well done. Frosty The Lucky.

If you have the black pipe change it out now. If you get a flame like that forget the flare. You'll want to close the openings up some or you're just blowing heat out. Frosty The Lucky.

The Amazon link is the correct fitting. Thinking about it now I have to buy the compression nuts separately too. I wouldn't buy the fitting online, I take the correct drill bit you'd use to drill a hole to tap 1/4"-28 with me to the local heating and plumbing supply. I use the drill bit to gauge the hole in the fitting there is enough variation some are too big to work. These are common fittings but not everywhere, a good auto or farm supply should carry them like Michael suggests. When the plumbing supply up my road was out I picked up a bag at Grainger's in Anchorage because I was close. There are a number of other places here in the Mat Su Valley I can find them. Frosty The Lucky.

Oh come on Ian, the forge is always perfecter on the other side of the fence. Everybody knows that. I was both agreeing with and taking a friendly poke at Mike. Frosty The Lucky.

That's a nice simple opener, not a thing wrong with it. The scratches are the places where the brush actually got through the scale you're looking at bare steel. How clean and shiny a customer likes it is up to them, make a selection and see what the market wants. If you bring it to bright red and brush vigorously it'll shine right up but you have to keep brushing till it's black hot or it'll scale up again. It's a good time to apply your finish before it can scale up on you. It won't happen instantly but you'd be surprised how fast it can happen. Straightening it is a matter of practice on your part but not necessary in this project. It looks just fine with that ergonomic little curve. Straightening pieces like that is a matter of firm gentle dead blows. Lay the not too hot, mid red is plenty, piece crown up and just let a decent weight hammer fall on the top of the curve. LISTEN to it carefully, as long as it's bent out of contact with the anvil face the blow will have a dead sound, be it thud, clunk or. . . When it starts to have the least metallic ring to it say clink, tink, clank . . . STOP hitting it! If you hit it when in contact with the anvil you will forge it and all you're after is bending it straight. Listen closely, the steel speaks to you with every blow. This is a situation where your ears will tell you far more than your eyes and once you have a handle on straightening on the face your holding hand will tell you when its right. Frosty The Lucky.

Your last paragraph got me smiling there Mike. I so fit into the good enough is good eough category. To address the question of why we all aren't using the "perfect" forge. I'd have to say they're kind of expensive for folk who aren't dong this all the time or believe me I'd HAVE an induction forge! Frosty The Lucky.

The flame is nicely shaped, looks good to me. how are you controlling the pressure now? That's obviously not running straight tank pressure. Don't use the tank valve to control the flame they're not designed for it. Propane will damage the seats being forced through the narrow space. Tank valves are designed to close and not leak, NOT regulate pressure or flow volume. You can get away with it for a little while but it WILL make the valve leak instead of close. If you can't find a regulator use a needle valve till you can. On your next burner build don't use galvanized for the tube. When it gets hot enough the zinc will burn and zinc oxide smoke isn't good to breath The stuff is downright BAD for you. Frosty The Lucky.

A two handed, compound lever gripper squeezer? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I can see how it works and mechanically what it does but have no idea what it's for other than to apply some serious gripping power through the claws. Frosty The Lucky.

Studying journalism are we? Frosty The Lucky.

I prefer 1/4" flare to 1/8" male pipe thread. (MPT). I can't say for sure from the pictures but I THINK the bottom one is what I use, it needs the compression nut. I"m not sure what the top one is but the one side doesn't look to be MPT. Do you have the labels or even the receipt to describe what you got? I could make a more educated guess if I knew what I was looking at. Frosty The Lucky.

It's been quite a while since I read Larry's FB page, just a couple weeks after the fire. I remember him saying his partner was going to take up making tongs but I got the impression it was till he got back up to speed. That was quite a while ago though so my memories are not only bad they're really out of date. Whatever he decides to do I'll be pulling for him. Frosty The Lucky.

You better be careful Das you'll get your wrists pinned! Frosty The Lucky.

Did you do a web search using those terms? Just reading the headers in the hits I see it's a phosphate bonded high alumina refractory. Without reading in depth it sounds like a great forge liner. Both phosphate and alumina are very much caustic resistant at high temperatures meaning it's very resistant to forge welding fluxes. I'd be thinking about using it for an inner hard refractory liner and insulating around it. Keeping the blanket OUT of flame contact altogether is a good thing. Do some reading about the product and see what you think. Consider it's working range and failure range. Consider application or how much hassle it is to use or work with. And of course price and availability. Frosty The Lucky.

Man I LOVE these things. We all owe you a serious vote of thanks for opening our eyes Charles. Frosty The Lucky.

Don't sweat it's to shrink the volume, enlarging it not so. Rex make's burners, better than mine but mine are easy to make and cost in the $10.00 ea. range. Okay, that's not a plug, the one you bought will work fine. Ron tends to be enthusiastic reviewing burner designs other than his. He's a good guy. Nice anvil stand, the only suggestion I'd make is to raise the top band an inch or two to form a lip so you don't have to do anything fancy to keep your anvil put. The space between the feet is a handy place to set hand tools you're using. Putting hammer rack on the stand is good too. The anvil is where you're going to use your hammers so being able to hand a couple few you're using on that job right on the side of the stand is handy. I hang my tongs from the forge for the same reason though my anvil stand has a tong rack on the far side I almost always reach for the forge tong rack. Once you become proficient you'll start speeding up and believe me efficient blacksmithing means going fast. NOT rushing, going fast. Do your planning while the piece is heating, it's too late to think about what to do once you've pulled it from the fire. One aspect of going fast is picking up tongs, hammers, etc. you dropped rather than take time to hang them up. Learn to drop them in a safe convenient place so you don't trip over them and don't have to hunt. You can pick them up and hang them while the piece heats and you think about your next step. Frosty The Lucky.