Frosty

If weathering is an issue use a marine epoxy with the welded studs in drilled holes method. Grit in the holes is a good idea as well, best is silica sand as it's pretty non-reactive. Nice snake by the way. :cool: Frosty

Babington Burner A homemade waste oil burner Babington Oil Burner HOWTO These are just a few URLs regarding oil burners, most notably Babington burners. Searching "Babington burners" "waste oil burners" or "fuel oil burners" will put you into more info than you want. A friend of mine has made a successful oil burner using an air brush as an injection nozzle. I searched all but the first one as the links in my book were mostly all dead. One thing I noticed as I glanced through these I posted hasn't changed since I last looked a couple years ago. Virtually all of them are burning with a yellow flame. There are blue flame oil burners out there but they have problems of their own. Containing the fire is a big item. Good luck, play safe and keep us posted. Frosty

Losing the blower tends to make any oil fired system into a fuel air bomb. There's certainly no reason these things can't be done, we had a fuel oil forge in my high school metal shop. The thing is they can be really dangerous and the hazards aren't necessarily intuitive. One method is to put a fuel oil burner from a boiler in a forge body. This is the fastest, easiest way to do it and have all the safety measures in place. It's basically plug and play. WVO is okay if you filter it and do the precipitation steps to remove the harmful components. It certainly won't cause an explosive situation just by spilling or leaking onto the floor. Slip hazard? Oh yes but that's a small thing. Frosty

It can be a real serious boom if the conditions are right and it doesn't make a lot of difference what the flamable material is. A few years ago there were some pics and videos of a guy named George Goble (not the comedian) who lit BBQs with LOX. He'd pile a few lbs of charcoal briquettes in a BBQ with one lit one on top then pour LOX on the pile. REALLY spectacular show, super bright flame and afterward nothing but some bits of burnt and melted BBQ in a circle of scorched earth. Wicked COOL. Son of a gun the pics are still out there. Last time I looked they'd been taken down and I couldn't find any. Seems like they're back. 2.5How To.html The one serious hazard next to the obvious one was not having a lit briquette on the pile when you start pouring. If there's a burning briquette the pile just burns as fast as you can pour the LOX on till there's nothing flamable left. If on the other hand you pour LOX on an unlit pile, then light it, it'll go off like an equal number of sticks of 80% dynamite. Even if you don't light it the oxy'll flow till it either finds an ignition source or finds something with a flash point below the ambient temp. Flash points in a pure oxy atmosphere are MUCH lower than in air. LOX is fun stuff if you're the careful type otherwise it can be a real shattering experience. Frosty

Thanks for posting these Randy. I've only watched the first one so far but am planning on enjoying them thoroughly. Repeatedly. Frosty

The iron scale is especially good for roses, makes the colors, especially reds, vivid. It's also good for any bright fruits and veggies. Just don't get too carried away there may be a toxic level. Another use for wood ashes is dusting the snow on your walks and driveway. It absorbs sunlight and the slight increase in acidity speeds melting. It's also a good way to make ice non-slip. Well, less slippy anyway. Frosty

It's a good episode. There have been a number of episodes where Roy does some smithing or visits a smith. The episode I'd like to have in my video library is from many years back about ironing a sledge. Roy and the smith covered all the iron work necessary to make a horse drawn log sledge with double moccasin runners. Very cool.. Frosty

Nice crow Sam. I'll bet they'd market nicely and there are plenty of variations. Say a jewelry holder. You know crows and shiney stuff. Frosty

Any fuel in the presence of oxy under pressure is a fire/explosion hazard. Fuel oil has a saturation point in air that is smack in the middle of it's flamable range. Any volatile will evaporate untill the air can't hold any more. Heating oil, diesel or parafin fuel oils will naturally evaporate untill it reaches a flamable ratio with the air it's in contact with and being saturated will not evaporate any more. This means that any air in an enclosed space with fuel oils is an explosive mixture. Gasoline isn't as dangerous as it's saturation point is beyond it's flamable range, there isn't enough oxy left for it to burn in an enclosed space. There are other problems with fuel oil fired forges but the danger posed by a spill is the biggest. Frosty

I hear that Finn! Frosty

Congratulations! Beer's on you. Frosty

Uh. . . Hmmmm. Didn't look at it till SOMEBODY paged me. Maybe I aught to read a thread before replying eh? Frosty

That's a heck of a forge! Nice job all round. Frosty

That really is Neat. . . Guy. Seriously, a guy could do a lot with one. How's it work on solid stock? Frosty

FYI: USPS flatrates have weight limits on them. Going over increases the rate though I don't know how much. Frosty

Looking good. How about some pics of and specs for the burner? I haven't heard of Oliver before, is there a URL? Details of how you build your forge, like refractory, insulated or not, etc. etc. Thanks, Frosty

I seem to have missed that thread. Then again, when I transfered off the drill crew I swore I'd never touch one again and that'd probably count for building one too. Still, it might be fun to read. . . Frosty

Huh? Whazzat? Frosty

Sounds like a good mix for teaching. I've discovered two kids learn much faster than one. Competition combined with pooling their brains I think. You might consider a chip bed propane forge. They're common in europe, much more common than our reverberatory furnace type forges. Chip bed forges work by injecting the air fuel mix into the bottom of a shallow pan filled with refractory chips. The fire heats the chips and the chips heat the work in turn. I supose this makes it a reverberatory system but I 'm not sure. Anyway, visually they're very much like a solid fuel forge without the smoke, sparks, ash, clinker, etc. While they'd be pretty expensive to buy and ship from europe they should be pretty easy to make. Not as easy as what we normally think of as a propane forge but no where near as difficult as a power hammer. This is the URL of one supplier. Gas Forges: Metal & Heat Treatment Equipment: Flamefast Frosty

Once a Goatman always a Goatman. Too late for hope now. Sounds like you really need a couple more. Goats are herd animals and really need a buddy of the same species though they will adopt others. Frosty (AKA: Old Goat & Goat Dad)

Do they need to be RR spikes? I'm sure you could buy 9/16" or 5/8" sq. stock a lot cheaper. Even in Hawaii. Heck it might be fun to make a header, have the kids forge their own RR spike, then make whatever you have in mind from them. Frosty

Take a magnet to it. If it sticks it'll work, if not it's probably something other than iron. If the black sand is blasting media it's probably slag or something similar. Not all black sand is iron and not all iron ore is a high enough concentration to work. Frosty

Sounds like a wether rather than a buck to me Ted. Nobody with working nasal apparatus would allow an intact buck in the cab of their truck unless it was a real emergency. Of course there's no accounting for taste so. . . Pygmies have great personalities and if they don't have goat buddies will bond to people like a puppy. Among the many metaphors used to describe them, "puppy dogs with hooves" is a common one. A pasture full of pygmy kids spronking around will put a smile on anybody's face. Frosty

It also looks like he's getting plenty of heat from charcoal briquettes without unreasonable oxidation. Nice use of an old BBQ too with the additional upside of not spoiling it for making dinner by using charcoal. Frosty

We'll avoid the gold mines or maybe I'll just test it and see what I find. If I were to start finding a decent amount of HG I'd have to consider mining and selling it. Heck the greenies would probably finance me even if it were a natural deposite. Yes, a bloomery and a cupola (per se) operate differently but structurally they're very similar. If we manage to get liquid iron I'm not going to complain! Maybe rethink the set up a little but no complaints. :cool: Frosty