Frosty

Kiln shelf is good for a forge floor, they're generally high alumina and more resistant to fluxes. Pop rivet the SS cylinder. Orrrrr. Insert a Tig tip in the orifice of your mig contact tip AFTER pulling the wire of course and you have a scratch start tig welder. Use Argon for the shielding gas. Yeah, it's a hokey set up and doesn't have the power control, and isn't as comfortable as using a proper tig torch but it will work. I'd use pop rivets though but that's me. I like the mail box shape better than a cylinder, it has the best of the vault shape roof for better IR radiation heat transfer into the stock and a naturally flat floor so stuff doesn't roll around. Tristan installed the burner in his mail box forge in the bottom aiming up and it works a treat. A LOT better than I thought it would, just doesn't fall into the burner at all, he doesn't have to worry about heat convecting up it when he shuts it down so he runs the rubber propane hose directly to it. Most of the other decisions you're asking about are up to your preference. Believe me your preferences WILL change once you start using these things so keep it simple for your first couple forges is my real suggestion. Frosty The Lucky.

If you're making a 3/4" burner 6"-7" is fine, threads on the output end don't matter. A 6"x10", 300cu/in forge is in the range a 3/4" burner will heat nicely. TWO 1/2" burners are roughly the same BTU output and you can space them so the chamber is more evenly heated. Frosty The Lucky.

Maybe, it says the same thing on the can but my can is more than 30 years old and is different, the can that is anyway. How's it work? Is it really liquid going on just under smoking heat steel? Does the steal look like it's just wet once you wipe the excess off? Do any little drips chip like hard resin? Let us know what you think. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Zaku, glad to have you. Nice forge, make your neighbor a hand forged something. If you're going to be burning charcoal a clinker breaker is just something else to wear out. However being in Georgia I expect coal is pretty easy to come by and a clinker breaker might come in handy. It's a good example of a simple functional tool, bells and whistles need not apply. Well done, next we want pics of your projects. Frosty The Lucky.

Good score on the complete vise so long as the screw and box threads are good. The spring and mounting plates are usually missing and very easy to replace. As suggested the only issue is as a bargaining chip. Frosty The Lucky.

Put a spacer behind the pitman and get it OFF the crank plate. You can see by the way it's hanging in the picture that the link arms are leaning back. You can see how much room there is on the crank before it gets to the lock pin, cotter key. It'll need a washer there but there's plenty of room to put one behind it and move it out a little. Grinding the heads on the bolts down is acceptable so long as you don't grind them off. The forces exerted on the bolts / pins is in the shear so all the heads and nuts do is retain them in position. Frosty The Lucky.

It looks like a drop in gate say for a dump truck to deflect the material to one side. Or similar to a grader gate which mounts on the end of a road grader's blade. We used gated grader blades for snow removal so we wouldn't plug driveways. That plate obviously isn't a grader blade gate but it's an example of a might be kind of what it could've been for. Personally I'd put it on the stock pile for when it's handy. Try to avoid the natural desire to figure out what to do with it and just use it when it or part of it will work for a job. I think most of us who've been at IT for a while have a bunch of "things" we've made because we found a THING that'd be perfect for a . . . thing. I have em all over the place mostly getting in the way. Frosty The Lucky.

Mount the 3.5" rd. on end at the right height and it will make a FINE anvil. Use the trimmings as stock.Tthe mill table might make a good jig table similar to an Acorn platten, not the same but workable. Frosty The Lucky.

Am I forbidden to quote too? Now I'll see about editing a quote. <sigh> My sister lives in Boise and Ron Reil lives in the mountains north of you somewhere. So much for my expertise with mechanical power hammers your's looks a LOT like my 50# LG. Fingers crossed, Frosty The Lucky.

If I didn't welcome you aboard earlier glad to have you here. If you're going to use someone's plans then follow them as closely as possible. Mike Porter's burners work very well his type 4 is probably at the point of diminishing returns for tweaking the design. One of his main design philosophies emphasizes a laminar air fuel flow in the tube so all his burner features are intended to enhance laminar flow. The tapered mig tip is to reduce or eliminate cavitation where the air flow moves over the blunt tip. A welding supply should carry tapered tips, call and ask. This is exactly the situation where going to a web site fails, a human voice on the other end can figure out what you want even if you aren't clear about what you're asking for. Just ask for tapered mig Contact tips, putting "contact" in the name will help eliminate confusion. Whether Mikey is right about laminar flow or not I don't know, I design for good turbulence to enhance fuel air mixing as propane doesn't mix well with others. Do NOT try to incorporate any of my ideas to a Porter burner or a Reil, or a Side arm or . . . their's to mine, mixing and matching is more PITA than useful. They all may be essentially the same in principle but execution is different and will alter how they work. Just following the plans you've chosen will give you the best results. Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome aboard Shade seeker, 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 within visiting distance. 50# LG? Good for you, I'm a serious proponent of rescues. A rescue never forgets you know. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm with you, I don't want people getting hurt either, especially if I gave them the idea. I appreciate corrections I get carried away sometimes and don't realize how far out of school I am. Frosty The Lucky.

Oooohhhh! Frosty The Lucky.

If they service furnaces boilers, etc. they'll probably have scraps. They can't "legally around here anyway" use trimmings from one job in another so they usually toss them. I can't buy something from EJ. Bartells without them loading me up on all sorts of stuff. The furnace and boiler guys live fire every day so telling them you blacksmith and what you need refractories for might make for a nice break from routine for them. The guys at Bartells and I really hit it off, they LIKE fire hotter the better. Most pros know Kaowool even if they use a different brand. They know what refractory is and temp ratings. Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you for speaking up, my hands on experience with glass is pretty much just messing around. I appreciate the correction, Annealing not tempering. With my experience working glass I should be quiet or just ask questions after doing some reading. Quoting Alex Bealer from "The Art of Blacksmithing" on mixing glass and iron doesn't count. Frosty The Lucky.

Vaughn misunderstands and you fault him for asking for clarification? YOU won't take time to explain? He hit the nail on the head first go and second. That's okay though if you won't take time to explain why should we? You've called it so be it. Frosty The Lucky.

Get rid of that blow drier, give it back to the wife or something it is flat ZERO use tuning your burner. NONE. In truth it looks pretty good. #1. The flame is a pretty good color and reasonably well centered if a little bushy. That color is the opaque light blue I associate with the primary cone. Compare it to a oxy acet torch flame, it's just not as bright. If this color flame were to be washing down and spreading on the forge floor it'd indicate too rich a burn and the Dragon's breath would have orange feathery edges to it's flames. The bushy shape might be the coupler's influence, I don't think means a lot though. The flame's bushy shape is why it doesn't have a secondary burn zone, the darker more clear flame surrounding the primary cone in an oxy acet flame. What psi are you running? #2 The dragon's breath looks to have very little or no orange in it. I can't see any in the pic, maybe take a night pic. Orange dragon's breath means rich. Blue can mean neutral burn or lean. The leaner the burner the louder the roar. I can often tell how the burn is by the sound but I have experience, but you don't so how it sounds isn't going to help you now. Just remember how it sounds as you change psi or adjust the jet for future reference. It MIGHT be running a little leaner than optimum but I'd put it to work for a day and see. I think it's pretty close. If you do trim the jet, only 1/8" MAX, you're close now. Close off the forge opening some, especially on the floor and let it burn a while. Heck put it to work and see how you like it. The bricks are starting to show color in the pic about where it should after a short time burning. Frosty The Lucky.

Good one consider it part of my joke bag. Town wide garage sale eh, how big's the town? Speaking of welder joke, I'd have to weld the doors on the shop and connex or Deb would be selling MY stuff. <shudder> Frosty The Lucky.

You can check under: HVAC, furnace and boiler servicing. They all deal with fire, refractory and have scraps. to a commercial service company what we call a drop is a scrap because they are prohibited by code sometimes law from using materials that are not off a roll, pallet, sealed bucket or bag. No left overs allowed. Calling on the phone is easier to locate stuff than doing web searches. The receptionist knows the business better than the boss and if they don't carry what you're looking for will know who does. Be nice, ask if they have a little time for an unusual question, tell them briefly what you're doing and ask their help. Office people especially love something that breaks up a routine and helping nice people makes everybody feel good. Frosty The Lucky.

Take a ball pein hammer to it and see if it was done correctly. Professionals who don't know the correct procedure can screw up a project like anybody but they're still pros. Think of it as a buzz word like calling old and rusty antique or vintage. Test it or it's a pig in a poke. Frosty The Lucky.

Oooohhhh WOW . . . What were we talking about? Frosty The Lucky.

They go together, the more you research the more you have to change your plans. You're ready when you don't need to change plans anymore. The sequence in my play book goes something like this. IDEA! (An awful lot of folk don't know the difference between idea and plan) Sketch out idea and what it does, space needed, etc. Do some reading hit the drafting board massage idea, drawings and do more reading, repeat till I can't think of anything else to change. Prototype, test, do more reading, repeat as needed. Frosty The Lucky.

I don't think a person could make steel behave like glass except maybe in micro gravity. There's a HUGE difference in surface tension and viscosity. Getting steel to do what the Chiluly school of art glass does is something I'd LOVE to see! What is pretty cool though is steel and glass have almost the same coefficient of expansion so slumping or even melting glass into iron/steel is very duable. Tempering the glass is a must of course unless you WANT crazed glass. Tristan is pretty good at slumping marbles into forgings and I've been messing with lamp work glass. Fun stuff but gooey glass is some of the stickiest stuff you've ever messed with it gets on everything. Fun though. Frosty The Lucky.

My Grandmother, Mom or Suzi talked about winter showers as standing in a wash tub, her Mother poured a dipper of water over them, they soaped up, scrubbed then her mother rinsed them with TWO dippers of water! The boys got a wash rag and soap, rinsed with a clean wet hand towel, one rinse of the towel and dry off. EVERY Sunday morning before church. Mom and her sisters had all the dolls they could make from grass and colored paper when they had colored paper. They used to giggle about naked dolls when they didn't have colored paper. When she was 6 they got an . . . OIL stove! When she was something like 8-9 lightning struck the tree out front and ball lightning came down the clothes line in the kitchen window and lit the oil tank on fire. Mom still had scars on her arms where she helped her sister Hazel carried the burning fuel tank outside to save the house. They went back to cooking with coal. Oh BABY a hot shower outside at -30f is a grand experience but I'll take rolling in the snow outside the Banya (Sauna) any day. If I ever find myself living in a cabin in the woods again forget the shower, I'll take a sauna any day. Nothing like a good sweat and a cool dipper of water to make a boy smell fresh as a daisy. . . Oh wait, that was probably the cologne wasn't it. A drop of vanilla extract makes you smell like cookies, I LIKE cookies. Frosty The Lucky.

Ahh Dave your memories of the dash for the cook stove in the morning reminds me of stories my maternal Grandmother used to tell us to point out how spoiled we were. Born in 1890 on a farm in Ohio somewhere. Everyone in the family had their own toilet seat and each one had a sewn cover. They were kept behind the stove and tucked under a coat for the mad dash to the outhouse on winder days. During my cabin in the woods days after I first moved to AK I adopted the strategy it's a good one. Then a neighbor pointed out how well a styrofoam toilet seat works, just a cesond's cold thrill when you plop your bare buns on it and it's warm. Even better! The next time they visited they noticed my styro seat behind the stove where condensation couldn't cover it in ice. Outhouses steam up the vent but out the holes so everything gets a covering of ice. Yeah, the solution is really obvious I put a plywood cover with a handle on the hole. That outhouse enjoyed a spectacular view of Mt. McKinley from the throne. Mom had other some frightening tales of turn of the last century farm living. Frosty The Lucky.