Frosty

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Aw, you're not in such desperate straits you have the #1 hard to find tool an anvil and a blower makes putting a forge together pretty darned easy. The rest are easy peasy, any smooth faced hammer under 2lbs. is a good place to start. I like starting folk out with a 32oz. Driller's hammer the handles a little short so it's easy to control while you're learning hammer control and it's not so heavy you're likely to injure yourself. A couple ball peins are good to pick up too, they're on my grab-em if the price is right list at garage, yard rummage, etc. sales. Cold chisels and punch kits are on the list too, they make excellent stock, you can put many right to work. Start practicing at the anvil with pieces of stock long enough you don't need tongs, say in the 24" range till you've developed the skills to make them, then go to town making tongs you'll want a bunch. PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is important, eye protection a MUST, almost anything else you do to yourself will heal up. The traditional retirement notice for a blacksmith was losing the other eye. A couple pair of pliers, slip joints are good for holding punches chisels, etc. if you get short ones, the work is HOT even through a glove. Vise grips are good for same and SOME tong work. Diagonal side cutters and fencing pliers are good for cutting wire, etc. A couple Crescent wrenches will serve for twisting wrenches till you can forge em up. If you're going to wear glove I don't recommend it but wear one on my left hand because I use a gas forge and it blows HOT and fire out the doors when I'm fiddling with the work. Any if you wear gloves, especially leather gloves have a bucket of water handy so you can get it off quickly. See, if you get leather too hot it will shrink and trap your hand then cook it, If you dunk it in the bucket the water will cool the heat and soften the leather. Occasionally you might want to stick a foot in if a cut off or something HOT falls in your shoe/boot. I think that's pretty good as a basic kit. You have the good parts, the rest can be made. Frosty The Lucky.

I've been forbidden out of this thread since the last time I replied. I'm trying to reply quickly with fingers crossed. Well said Alan you were much clearer than I. You can close down the exhaust openings more with commercial burners than homemade ones. Commercially manufactured burner tubes are tapered full length so they are stronger induction devices and much less susceptible to back pressure external breezes, etc. After a while a person can listen to the burner and forge while closing the openings and determine when they're adversely affecting the burner(s) with back pressure. It's like any tool they speak to us we just have to pay attention and learn the language. Frosty The Lucky.

Next you're going to tell me the troll is asking about burners aren't you? D-R-A-T-S I bit again didn't I?!! Frosty The Lucky.

Well I apologize sirah I shant waste your time with my coy insults. That they astonish you makes my point better than I could on my best day. As you wish.

I kind of like the guard pattern in your Avatar. Truth is I don't really have a good mental image of any of them but couldn't let a good straight line lay. I can however see how the idea works and am getting crazy stupid intricate mental images of basket hilts made with high contrast pattern welded stock. Frosty The Lucky.

Trying to reinvent the wheel is expensive. There are I don't know how many plans for working burners available. IF you look. If you're going to just dive in without knowing what you're doing how do you expect to understand anything we tell you? Seriously you've posted an excellent example if an idea without a plan. You don't know what questions to ask, don't know anything but that it doesn't work and show us pics that don't mean anything, yet expect us to tell you how to "fix" it? I refer you to Thomas's advice to buy a commercially manufactured forge, you have to know more than you do now to just buy burners. Frosty The Lucky.

Check with the building supply most have a concrete contact paint for wood but you're not building a foundation for a house. I'd just put it to work, my untreated spruce block lasted some 20 years before it got bad enough to replace, the new steel stand can be a problem for the exchequer of my estate. Frosty The Forbidden.

I'd recommend Gote's forbidden method. Of course in the course of learning the craft you could turn out things like key fobs, wall and J hooks, etc. etc. sell them for a few pennies and by time the stand needed replacing you could afford to. Frosty The Forbidden.

Sure, stop on by I'll show you the ropes. Frosty Some Place.

I'm being forbidden every time I try replying but in sort no, that setup won't work worth the trouble to get it to. Frosty The Forbidden!!

That jet is WAY too close to the tube. To start tuning you want it about 1/2 way across the air intake, that's the GAP between jet and burner tube. Try cutting 1/2" off the one showing. Frosty The Lucky.

Put a strong magnet in a plastic bag then run it over river sand or let it lay in the water on the bottom. Every once in a while remove the plastic bag over a bucket the black sand will drop off. Repeat till you have enough for a smelt. If you think you're in mercury "contaminated" material check by rubbing it gently on a clean copper sheet. Any mercury will amalgum with the copper and show as shiny silver stain. If you're collecting anything in California or heck any gold country streams there is mercury everywhere there is gold. Cinnabar is everywhere you find gold, silver, copper, etc. When Dad was prospecting and selling extraction machinery we used to see more $/ton. in mercury than gold, silver and copper together recovered from California screams and rivers. Especially the west side of the Sierras, lots of mercury naturally. The Basin and Range country on east is pretty mercury rich but not like the west side of the Sierras. Dad and I always carried a 1lb. bottle of mercury, a squeeze bottle of 25% nitric acid and a little dish soap. Dawn became THE dish soap when it came out. We always had our prospecting kit when we were fishing. Funny how trout like to rest in back eddies where food comes to them and gold settles out of the flow. Catch a trout, scoop a pan load and see what you get. You'd be amazed how 3 drops on mercury put in the pan to amalgamate with gold would turn into 10-15 drops of mercury. Yeah, we carried sample bottles, notebooks and maps so we could log our results. Both gold and trout. Just learn to check for mercury, I like the copper sheet especially vibrated though some guys would just stir the concentrates with a copper rod. No matter where you are or what method you use stay out of the exhaust from the smelt. Cinnabar also contains cyanide, lots in the really RED cinnabar. The colors: RED, orange, yellow, etc. aren't only a warnings on animals. Frosty The Lucky.

What's the make of the forge? I have an old Johnson Appliance 122A forge out back. It's a gun feeding for nozzles in the chamber. The burner nozzles are rectangular on the flat. I've never converted it to propane let alone lit it, these forges are more inline for a production shop, not a hobbyist. They are serious gas hogs so a person better have enough production to justify one. Burner nozzle shape is less important with a gun (blown) burner. If you know the maker you can probably get the specs from the company, Johnson keeps it's manuals, parts lists and parts available online. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Ned, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live in the UK. I'm sure there are casters here but this is more of a blacksmithing forum so don't be too disappointed if a bunch of guys don't jump in with answers. However, I don't believe you should be boiling the bronze and using all scrap is a factor as well. Have you pickled the pieces? Frosty The Lucky.

Check the temp rating on the box some fire brick aren't terribly high and you really want split brick, there's no need to heat 4 1/2" of . . . rock. Insulating brick is pretty fragile for a forge floor though Tristan uses soft brick for most everything in his forges. I'm not even going to mention what happened to the soft brick in his forge yesterday. Frosty The Lucky.

You said you'd moved the choke and the pic of the burners running was over the top rich so I assumed you'd closed off the air intakes. This group of pics shows the jet orifices and they look larger than the ones I use on a 1" burner which is plenty to melt steel in a 700cu/in forge. A 4" ID x 12" chamber is 150 cu/in so the simple ratio says a 1/2" burner. However it's so long the temperature would be pretty uneven, the area immediately around the burner nozzle. Two 1/2" burners is twice what it'd need by the basic numbers but you can turn the pressure down and it'd probably be okay. I can't say for sure I've never run a forge that long and narrow. I live in Alaska where freight about doubles the price of everything and I can buy a high volume 0-30psi variable pressure regulator for around $26.00 shipping included. A propane rated hose is or was the most expensive single thing in the burner set up. The black iron plumbing parts will run about $10.00 USD, the brass fittings another $10-$15 depending on what and how you set it up. Come to think about it if you line your bean can forge with Kaowool it'd probably work to use 2-3 propane soldering torches and not have to make anything but a little manifold ot buy the "Y" fittings to fuel them all. Frosty The Lucky.

Closed for a naturally aspirated forge is wide open for a gun. He keeps the forge as close to as possible and keeps the flame off the stock. It's a whole different thing. You gauge the stock's temperature by pulling it just like a solid fuel forge. After a while you have a good idea of how long it's going to take to come to heat. I know how long it's going to take my steels to heat, I don't stand there watching them I do other things and only glance when they're should be close to ready. Same same, just different machines. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard John glad to have you. At one point in your post you ask "yourself" why not use a BBQ burner in a forge. Because it's for a BBQ not a forge. If you'd left the units as they were they might MIGHT be adequate in a bean can forge. The way you've closed the air intakes down is what's making the WAY too rich (yellow feathery) flames. You'll be farther ahead just making the right size and number burners to fit your forge. Trying to make a BBQ burner work is a losing proposition. Frosty The Lucky.

Ease up there a bit. Alan says he doesn't use "atmospheric" (naturally aspirated) burners so back pressure isn't an issue. What he's describing as properly tuned is right for a gun (blown) burner, especially for a large furnace. A large forge furnace works better with a hard refractory liner for a few reasons: First, larger forges usually mean larger work or large quantity so the hard brick radiates more heat because it has a higher specific heat think reservoir. Secondly you don't light a large forge up for a few hours or half day at a time, they're often lit and left running for weeks with a low flame to keep them hot over the weekend to prevent thermal checking. Lastly a large forge, large size or quantity of work means the interiors tend to get beat up more than a small forge. For a hobbyist our side of the pond insulating a small chamber is more economical because we're only lighting it up for a couple few hours at a time. We don't need the thermal mass because even if we're heating 1" sq. stock we aren't doing enough to need the higher output of a hard refractory "reverberative" liner. Our forges are also more susceptible to thermal cycling because they're hot for a while then cool down. That's why you're going to be buying soft brick pretty often and I use Kaowool. I'm assuming Alan's is a commercial operation. Unless things have changed most hobbyists using gas are using "chip forges." A whole different breed of forge and they too require a gun burner there's too much back pressure to work with a naturally aspirated burner. What we use for small forges in the States is pretty uncommon for the UK and naturally aspirated burners are even more rare. Nothing Alan passed on is in error. Your forge is WAY too wide open, the door can be 1/4 brick size and be larger than it really needs to be. I've already said as much. His perspective on well tuned is aimed at a neutral flame and naturally aspirated burners tend to actually be oxidizing when the outside cues say it's neutral. Heck, unless I'm mistaken I believe folk in the UK use methane rather than propane so dragon's breath would be a BAD thing. Frosty The Lucky.

I figured the orientation of the grate bars was customer specced, there's nothing good about it otherwise. Sometimes "Paid in Full" is all the gratitude we can realistically expect. There are times when being able to say, "I just built it" is a saving grace for our market name. Frosty The Lucky.

Next time cut the drum head at least 1" in from the rim. Then cut the other drum's head just inside the rim. File ALL the cut sheet steel edges smooth unless you LIKE blood in your quench oil. Pop rivet or sheet metal screw: handles, etc. on the larger dia. piece. You now have a barrel with a removable lid and another open ended drum to: put, burn, trash, or whatever, stuff in. My quench oil container is a 15gl. grease drum with a removable lid that just snaps on. I keep it inside a cut down 55gl. drum to contain a fire if something goes really wrong in the quench. I get my quench oil from the local supermarket's kitchen I was hoping for canola oil from the doughnut fryer but my shop smells like egg rolls, chicken nuggets and . . . ? When I quench. Until you takes some classes and practice you really need to avoid welding anything a failure could hurt ANYBODY. Stick welding on cruddy drums isn't a beginner's path to success learning to weld. Frosty The Lucky.

There's a practical reason too, it's much easier to use a reverse scroll as a fulcrum and lever stubborn logs with a poker. Typical tapered scrolls look nice but aren't as popular once folk get a look at a reverse scroll. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Irontoes, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you'll be more likely to find someone to ride with. We aren't going to remember where you are after we open the next post. We like Pics too, most anything you'd let preschoolers look at or read is good. Outside of the occasional slip up we're a pretty family oriented bunch. Frosty The Lucky.

Ball peins make good top tools of most types. Draw the temper on the end you're going to strike with a hammer into the purple, you don't want it chipping. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard James, glad to have you. If you've been reading much here you know how addictive the blacksmith's craft is. It's a lifelong learning curve and a heck of a trip. Enjoy the ride, Frosty The Lucky.