Frosty

Good for you Chad! Involving new folk in the addiction is a fine thing! Maybe suggest she join the IFI gang, hmmmm? I've been called worse Nat, I couldn't count how many times I've signed posts Forsty to be caught by spell check, I flagged it as never good. It's actually blinking at me in a most annoyingly attention getting way on the screen right now. Frosty The Lucky.

MAN, that must've been good steel, filling the bore with sand like that should've caused it to explode! I used to shoot pop cans of ice or plaster of Paris from a home built cannon using oxy acet as propellant. The one I built for the 4th of July at the hatchery in Prince William Sound fired cans close to 1/4 mile. Empty cans or those filled with water got turned into chaff. . Frosty The Lucky.

Goodness BMTU! I'm going to make a couple suggestions that may fly in the face of some of the good advice given so far. Hmmm, I'm saying this again, twice in two days! ARGHHHH! I take exception to you saying you lack "TALENT", you lack skill. Talent is or isn't, like eye color. Skill on the other hand can be learned and is the combination of a little knowledge and a lot of practice. PERIOD! You're making a couple bad decisions as to expectations too. First, forget about perfection, I don't care who the smith is if you look closely you'll find imperfections. Forget timing yourself and worse still competing against video demonstrations. Good grief do you compare yourself to soap opera "hunks" or TV heros? Stop trying to make complicated projects. On the how to list. Every complex project is nothing but a series of simple pieces or processes joined together. Believe it or not there really are only a few basic processes: drawing out, upsetting, bending, punching, cutting and joining. Welding, riveting, collaring, etc. being sub categories of joinery. Combining them yields your products say, a mortis and tenon joint is a punched and perhaps drifted hole, a bar drawn down to round for a specific length, heated, inserted in the mortis and peined. 3 basic processes to make one join. Do that half a dozen times and you have a grate, trivet, etc. Make 4 of those long and narrow, join them together and you have a door. etc. Discounting measuring, cutting and such really basic skills you can dress an entire house with 4-5 basic processes. Mastering the craft is nowhere near as complicated you've convinced yourself. Honest, it's pretty simple. Frosty The Lucky.

That and just because it's dry doesn't mean the ingredients can't react and degrade the whole. Frosty The Lucky.

Nobody's born knowing this stuff or anything, we all began at zero, welcome to the club. I take exception to your "dumb stage" comment though, not knowing something isn't dumb, it's ignorant. Ignorance can be fixed easy as learning but dumb is forever. To paraphrase R. A. Heinlein, "Ignorance can be cured, stupidity is it's own death sentence." Something like that. Most of us took up the craft because we like making things with our own hands and creativity is a MUST to be any good at it. I get a little ego boost from being able to shape steel like modeling clay and have always been comforted by knowing I could make most of what I need with a fire something hard and heavy to beat against, something to beat with and whatever steel I find. As a young kid I saw Paladin on "Have Gun Will Travel" stranded by bandits on the prairie with nothing. He came too and started searching, he finds the remains of a wagon train and sets about making survival gear, fire, makes pancakes from flour and water, moccasins from canvas and forges himself a knife and dart points from scrounged iron from a wagon. He makes an atlatl a few steel tipped darts and goes hunting for his horses and gear. I've never liked the idea of being helpless. Frosty The Lucky.

You're welcome, it's my pleasure. Often burners will pop or sputter when you shut them off, this is normal. What is happening in a naturally aspirated burner is they are tuned to produce a neutral or SLIGHTLY rich flame in operation. The primary pressure, propane jet, is inducing combustion air be causing a low pressure zone around the expansion cone, just like a truck driving by. When you contain the jet in the mixing tube a couple things happen, as Bernoulli states a fluid flowing over a curved surface causes a low pressure boundary layer between the flow and the curved surface. The most common demonstration is a piece of paper in your fingers and blowing over the curved top, the paper lifts because the pressure below is greater than above. An airplane wing is an every day example. Back to the propane jet in the mixing tube, It begins expanding as soon as it leaves the jet it begins expanding taking up a larger volume but not slowing much so the pressure falls and combustion air is induced to enter the intake ports to fill in. The jet is also inside a tube which is a curved surface which causes more pressure loss. Okay, all that said, the fuel air mix is flowing down the tube driven by the fuel jet and all's well. I assume you turn your burner(s) off with the tank valve on the propane tank. Tank psi is roughly 200 at room temp from the valve to the regulator, it's reduced to your operating psi over typically 6' of propane hose a couple fittings to the jet. It takes a little time for the propane in the circuit to bleed off. While it is going down the velocity of the flame will be dropping at one point the rate of propagation or flame front velocity exceeds the mix's velocity so the flame travels back up the mixing tube and she sputters or POPS and goes out. Make sense? I've never cared for torches popping when I shut them off which is my least favorite thing about owning an oxy propane torch, the rosebud sounds like a rifle, a loud one. The easy way to eliminate well . . . minimize sputtering or popping on shut down is to install a 1/4 turn propane valve on the output side of your regulator. The circuit still needs to bleed down but only from the regulator to the jet, the reg doesn't bleed down and more importantly it takes a few seconds to close the tank valve. propane bleed down goes from a few seconds to maybe 1/2 a second and she's off. Frosty The Lucky.

The reason flash back / back flow preventers aren't seen on propane forges is simply because they are fuel air torches, there is NO high pressure oxidizer in the circuit. Without an oxidizer NO fire CAN flow up the hose let alone into the tank. NO oxygen NO FIRE. Yes? What you describe above can NOT happen. What can happen is a cut or burned supply hose and a flame monster flowing BADNESS breath in your shop. This won't happen with modern propane tanks because they have internal safety valves to prevent high gas flow. Makes it hard to use new tanks, you have to turn them on gradually or they shut off. If you have an oxy fuel torch backfires used to be a danger, drag a cutting torch on the steel you're cutting and you could get a backfire going and literally melt the tip if you don't shut it right off. This is possible because the oxygen is at a higher pressure than the fuel so a blockage of just the wrong type and oxygen could be forced back into the fuel hose potentially turning it into a detcord analog. We heard lots of stories about acetylene tanks exploding. I started hearing them in my first metal shop class in 66 but have you EVER seen pics? And to be honest I've never seen a pic or talked to someone (I'd believe) who saw a fuel hose explode. One instructor said he'd seen one do a fast burn for a couple but that's it. That said, I'll be the first to admit I do NOT know even a fraction of what's to know. If you find examples of propane or acetylene tanks exploding do to a back fire I'll be on the "PREVENT THIS" bandwagon immediately. Frosty The Lucky.

I couldn't find a way to reply to Steve's announcement that the Blue Print section is back online for our use. And dog GONNIT Steve and probably Foo deserve a hearty THANK YOU for opening that old door again! WAY TO GO GUYS!! Frosty The Lucky.

12 psi is a reasonable pressure, on my 4 burner forge I had to match burners so I could run two at the same psi and get close to the same flame intensity. I don't turn them down much below 11 or so or back pressure starts effecting them. Unless I'm mistaken your intake ports are larger than I make mine so they will induce more air and to balance the mix you'd probably have to move the gas net closer to the throat than I do. It's to be expected. I used the same T-inducers to drive NARB and they perform far better, they're stable from stop to stop on my 0-30psi regulator. The problem running NARB at low pressure is the heat build up in the burner head starts pre-igniting the mix inside the burner. Running it a higher psi than about 8-9 gives you close to 6 hrs. work time before overheating. I haven't tried improving NARB, I don't spend much time at the anvil anymore and certainly not 6hrs at a stretch. Frosty The Lucky.

Spoil sport! I LOVE a good typo but you're pretty new here so I've been letting them go. Frosty The Lucky.

I've never seen a "punch" shaped like that, it's a pretty obtuse taper and almost pyramidal. What are you planning on punching? Frosty The Lucky.

DogGONE rabbit holes! This site is late(?) bronze age, 850 BCE or there abouts. There are quite a few bronze artefacts and the excavation is still ongoing. https://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-settlement/about/ I HOPE I can find my way out of these rabbit holes soon but I'm all caught up on Doc's "The Whiteboard," soooo. Frosty The Lucky.

I was sticking on lost wax too but I haven't done any casting to speak of since high school. The voices kept whispering there were other ways to cast complex bronzes that weren't lost wax. Viola! https://asia-archive.si.edu/learn/ancient-chinese-bronzes/bronze-age-casting/ Frosty The Lucky.

Giminy, so much for my keen observational skills, I didn't pick up on your magnetic chuck at all. <sigh> That does however the voices suggesting you take a couple pics of the beastie doing hand(?) stands on it. Frosty The Lucky.

That helped a lot George, it was shorter but a lot more clear and concise. Sometimes cites make up more verbiage than the article. I know how it was probably worn and used for. Knowing how it was cast would be would be SWEET. Frosty The Lucky.

That's a pretty interesting read Scott, I wish they'd shown how a belt loop works. Dog gone heritage daily is full of rabbit holes too easy to get lost in. Thanks for the link. Frosty The Lucky.

Not so much more elaborate as more clear. Your C sketch could be almost anything, I don't see a guide when I look at it even with you saying what it is. Of course I understand these are for you and you know what's in your mind, very few people can read my working sketches in the shop. There is no need to drill the die mount holes through heavy steel, 1/2" is more than enough to be rock rigid. It's all under compression so all the bolds do is retain it, it's a near zero stress job. If you make the ram and anvil bolt plates a little wider than the anvil and ram and drill through the overhang and match the die plates it's a piece of cake. All the connecting is through a flange, all the press force is between the ram and anvil, the flange and bolts are completely out of the pressure. The plastic is UHMW (Ultra High Molecular Weight) polyester plastic. It's cheap and is plenty slick for presses, power hammers and sliding friction components. Just polish the steel that will be sliding against it and you're golden. You can buy a 5' x 10' sheet for less than enough oil bronze for one side and it comes in different colors. Frosty The Lucky.

I'm no press guru by a long shot. I don't think I could offer an opinion about the device as sketched. As sketched part of it, the guide and? is really incomplete. If you break what is shown in the sketch into components we might have some ideas. Without having a better idea of what's going on here the best I can to is toss out how we've been mounting dies to power hammers so they are interchangeable between many of the club members. We bolt out upper and lower dies to a steel plate that attaches to the base and ram. Both top and bottom dies have exactly the same bolt pattern. We made ONE template plate, same drill bit and tap. No dove tails, no retention clamps, clips or other gizmo. We simply lay the bottom die on the bottom and screw it down. Some guys had issues with the top die but it's as easy as using wood blocks to get it close enough to start the screws. I use lock washers on mine and the top die still loosens up after a while but most of the guys only use screws and don't have issues. I THINK welding my dovetail to the mounting plate warped the plate slightly so it springs a couple thousandths but it's not enough of a problem to fix. If I build a press I'll use the same dies so I can bum them from anyone who has one I like or need at the time. Frosty The Lucky.

Oh those OTHER GUYS! If one were to describe the environment of online burner plans, advice, etc. it would (or should) be, "Confusion." Frosty The Lucky.

Morning (here) Jono. You must be using a 0,035" mig tip or you'd have to be running much higher psi and choking the air ports to get those decent looking flames. two, 3/4" burners running @ 12psi sounds like about 6hrs. worth on a 20lb tank. Give or take a little of course. I get a little more but I only run mine at about 15psi when I'm welding, the rest of the time I run around 8-10psi, depending on the project. I find that shooting for a happy medium like your 12psi. isn't really happy for either general forging or welding. Turning the regulator up or down only takes seconds and the forge will catch up in a minute or two. Changing pressure is the ONLY reason to have a gage on a hobby forge, it saves time. For general stuff I throttle the flame by ear. It only takes a little practice to get good at hearing what temp you've set the pressure to. Next time you change between welding and forging try to do it by the burner's roar, THEN look at the gage. It won't take long and you'll only glance at it to verify for tricky temps. Frosty The Lucky.

I stumbled on this site probably going on 20 years ago myself and it's been a good place to hang. I think almost everyone who joins in benefits and sometimes makes something great from it. Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you Larry. My voices kept saying it was very similar or the same as a magneto hydrodynamic drive mechanism and is being used to drive boats. They'd been around years before the movie "Red October." All I knew was it worked. I thought perhaps the moisture in the smoke was the secret but I guess not. Well, maybe not. A low volt short circuit is exactly what I thought first time I saw a copper wire wrapped stovepipe with jumper wires leading to a salvaged battery holder thingy and battery. Maybe the charge flowing through the iron to the next coil isn't perpendicular to the flow of the magnetic field, smoke, Aether, magic spells, or? Frosty The Lucky.

It comes from almost 50 years of heating or supplementing with wood heat. I use a couple small screw drivers to open the female side of the crimp till it will let the lip pass. We almost never see stove pipe closed up in the store except the displays. Here's a wood stove trick I bet hardly anybody knows. Living remote batteries are a big deal, especially before Ni cad, about our only news came from the radio and walking around light flashlights. One trick for stretching battery life was to carefully roll them on the wood stove, heating them a little would get a couple few more hours of life from them. Then someone clued us into the big trick which worked really well on ni cads but pretty well on the old carbon ones. Wrap a few turns of bare copper wire around the stack and attach the free ends to your battery. The number of turns determined the voltage and wire diameter the amperage to a degree. The hot smoke moving up the steel stove pipe generated a moving magnetic field, copper windings turned it into electricity. I moved back to the city about then so I never found out how many winds it took to charge a car battery. Frosty The Lucky.

You remind me of a genie of some sort Greg. Mention your company and poof here you are! Like you have a bot watching us to let you know. Frosty The Lucky.

Morning Tink or I suppose it's evening on your side of the big salty. Well said. It must be brought to at least medium red heat, your burner will do the job nicely, even if it isn't a top performer. Some guys have used Bernzomatic type torches to good effect though it takes a lot longer. Frosty The Lucky.