jcornell

I don't know if your soft, outer bricks are rated for this temperature. If not, the expansion and contraction that come from heating and cooling will crack them into pebbles sooner than you think. The hard bricks suck up a lot of heat. If you coat it with Plistix, Metricote, ITC-100 or home-brew zircon/kaolin wash, all of these are refractive coatings that reflect heat back into the chamber, and incidentally, cut back on how much heat the hard bricks suck up. The coatings make the chamber more efficient, but would do next to nothing if painted on the inside of the soft bricks that are outside the chamber's hard bricks.

That issue is not online - can you provide a bigger picture?

Grainger Industrial Supply is pretty good about letting you know country of origin - as usual ,the stuff from China is cheaper - but not 100% of the time!

Owen Bush has a "viking ladies' knife" with an integral handle that makes its own finger guard - I suggest you think about that as a change in design. I think he's posted pictures of it here on IFI.

Well, one question is easy to answer - if the forge is made of bricks (unless it's insulating fire bricks, which are light, like styrofoam) then you have to heat up all the bricks before you'll get much heat on your metal. The bricks are acting like a heat sink.

3/4" burner, coffee can forge - 8-10 hours at non-welding heat. Probably 5-6 hours at welding heat.

For a starter forge, build a small forge out of a three pound coffee can. My first forge was made from insulating fire brick (IFB), painted inside with ITC. It was a great forge, but not too durable, as the IFB cracks with use. Look at the simple gas forge plans at Larry Zoeller's site - www dot zoellerforge dot com. Then look at the bean can forge plans. My current forge is a coffee can forge with a 3/4" burner. I've posted pictures here on this site showing the forge and the various burners that I've used. ITC is expensive. I now use a homebrew refractory coating that's 4 parts zircopax to 1 part kaolin, using colloidal silica (rigidizer) to bind it together. When it's time to move up to a bigger forge, get a helium tank. The one that are sold for parties (baloons) come in two sizes - the small one is the size of a freon tank, the large one the size of a propane tank.

Oh another data point. I used to have a 3/4 to 1" reducer on the end for my flare. The flame was actually burning inside the flare, and heating it up. I removed the flare and put the nozzle into the insulation so it would act as a nozzle. The end of the burner isn't getting red hot but now I have this chuffing problem. I suspect this may be your problem - if you don't like the reducer and don't feel like buying a flare, go to the big box store and pick up a 3/4" conduit connector (you'll find it in electrical, not plumbing). It's probably got a shiny galvanized coating, so pickle that off with acid (add acid to water, not the other way around) screw it onto your burner tube and you're in business. One of the functions of the flare is to keep the burning more or less in one place.

You are correct! When you have it at top-dead-center you need to use some scrap superwool (kaowool, etc) to stuff around the burner in the holder tube to prevent hot gasses from rising and messing with the burner's air intake. In a forge this small it's hard to get a good swirl going (at least I've not had a lot of luck with that) so top-dead-center is my next choice. Use the hot spot to your advantage!

Here's a 1/4" square bar loop weld. It was done in this coffee-can forge I was using the burner at the right (3/4" modified Porter style burner) In the first picture, the dark object is the #2 cat in the house, who insisted that she needed to be in the picture.

Owning chunks of metal that used to be rails or spikes is not illegal. Stealing them from the railroads or trespassing on railroad property invokes a host of crimes. Used rail equipment is sold every day - legally. You can also buy brand new spikes by the piece or by the barrel. Yes, a pony keg would make a lovely forge, but as a new smith start small - you'll save on gas and you'll get practical experience that won't cost you too much. Propane is not free. The more space you heat, the more propane you use. As a beginner, heating space you don't need is leaving money on the table. My coffee can forge is insulated with one inch of Superwool HT and painted with a reflective coating that reflects the heat back into the forge. I can weld in it. I work in small-ish stock (3/4" and below) but I have done 1" stock in the can - it just takes a while.

Probably the first mistake aspiring blacksmiths make concerning their decision to build a forge is the size of the forge. It must be huge, because after all, someday the aspiring blacksmith wants to make a sword. Build a small forge from a 3# coffee can using a venturi burner. Learn how to do the basics. Learn how to build a proper burner, how refractory coating improves the efficiency of the forge, etc. I'm now on experimental forge #4 - it's a 3# coffee can with a pass-through hole in the back. No, I can't do everything with this forge, but I can do 95% of the things that _I_ want to do at this stage in my journey as a beginning blacksmith. As to anvils, get a 30-40" piece of railroad track and stand it on end - you'll have lots of mass and a fairly decent area to work on. If you decide you don't want to keep smithing, you'd be surprised at how easily you can get rid of all of your equipment. If you keep at it, you'll have a portable anvil to complement the 400# behemoth that you buy once you start making super-duper progress. I got my first anvil for free - because I let people know that I wanted to start the craft.

hightemptools-dot-com and zoellerforge-dot-com both sell regulators, hoses and burners. I've dealt with both companies and found them satisfactory. They sell everything from the plug that goes into the propane bottle to the burner, so you can easily get a complete solution (if that's what you want to pay for). A place like mcmastercarr-dot-com or mscdirect-dot-com are great at providing parts you can assemble together if you know what you're doing. My major caveat is that I don't know what type of fitting you'll find on propane bottles sold in Germany. If you're buying at the military PX, I imagine that it's a standard POL 2 fitting - but if you're buying at a local German store, I suspect that the fitting is some metric fitting that may not be compatible with all the stuff you'd get from an American supplier. I suspect you need to do some more research on German propane fittings. http://www.wynen-gas.de/pages/gb/produkte/hauptgruppe/campinggas/obergruppe/reglerusaumbau.html?PHPSESSID=e94f4b30d5c2a801f286079f91555c98 is a company that claims that it sells adapters that let you connect USA grills to German propane bottles. This may or may not solve your problem. Good luck - make beautiful things. J

Start by reading the sticky threads on this website.

I've been playing with burner and forge designs. Forge #1 was a brick pile with a 3/4" Z-burner from Larry Zoeller. Subsequently I started playing with small "bean can" forges, using a 3# coffee can for the forge body. Attached picture is experimental forge #4. It's got 1 inch of superwool HT, treated with colloidal silica as a rigidizer. After the rigidizer was dry and cooked, I put on an experimental refractory coating, a mixture of 4 parts zircopax and one part kaolin. Instead of using water to make a slurry, I used the colloidal silica rigidizer. It worked out fairly well on the rigidized superwool. It's tough, it's very reflective. Experimental forges 2, 3 and 4 (all bean can designs) all used a 1/2" scaled down version of the Z-burner, which I call the Wye Burner. I like the Wye burner, but the 1/2" burner wasn't putting out as much heat as I'd like. So I built a 3/4" burner loosely based on the micro-mongo design. Attached picture shows the 1/2" Wye Burner and the 3/4" micro-mongo burner. Both burners are using a Tweco 14T-23 (.023) mig tip. Using the same regulator setting, same burner tip as the 1/2" burner, the 3/4" burner puts out a LOT more heat than the slightly smaller burner. I don't understand why I'm getting so much more heat. The regulator is set at the same pressure, the mig tip is the same diameter, but the 3/4" burner beats the 1/2" burner in heat output, hands down. With the regulator and gas input being the same, why is there such a difference in heat output? Can you wise blacksmiths explain this one to me? Please?

I don't use much choke with a Wye burner (Z-burner) - but when I do I use a magnet and put it on the opening and slide across as necessary to block the air intake.

1" conduit connector (after you've pickled off the zinc) works well as a nozzle.

When you have the burner at Top Dead Center (TDC) you will have to use some sort of insulation to stopper up the gap between the burner holder and the burner tube. Otherwise you'll have hot gasses going up this chimney and then getting sucked into the breather of your side-arm burner. Once that happens your burner will start stuttering and otherwise misbehaving. This is simple enough if you have scraps of kaowool around. I had this problem with the current forge I'm fiddling with - a few scraps of kaowool (actually, I use Superwool) fixed this problem and let me get back to forging. The hot spot just is a fact of life - learn to use it. If you want a slow soak, put your metal to the side while working something else under the hot spot.

Well, I took the 3/4" design and scaled it down to 1/2" for a smaller Zoeller style burner - I love it! I have a plan on building a larger than 3/4" Zoeller-style burner (I call it a Wye burner) when I have a larger forge.

The problem will be the stress where the burner tube connects to the forge body. Forge #3 was a coffee can forge and the stress of the burner tube pulling down under the weight of the burner and hose began to deform the shape of the can - the front was round, but the back was kind of a squashed oval. Attaching legs to a popcorn can's going to be touchy, because the steel is so thin. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just that you'll have to craft an engineering work-around to the problem. Forge #4 is also a coffee can forge, so I took the top and bottom off of another can, slit it down the side and wrapped the second can around the first can to double the thickness of the wall - which seems to help with the structural rigidity. Big box stores (Lowes, Home Depot) sell empty paint cans.

From looking at the picture, one pair has a right-handed twist, the other pair has a left-handed twist.

The soup can forge is pretty small - I'd upsize to a 3 pound coffee can. Don't use plaster of paris and sand for refractory, it's not built for the task. Buy some superwool (Axner.com sells it by the foot) stiffener and some sort of refractory coating. PM me for a 1/2" burner design that is really, really easy to build I scrounged a 30" piece of railroad track and donated it to another smith - he turned it on end and set it in a five gallon pail with cement - it's a pretty sweet anvil, and still portable. The cement dampens the ring a bit. It's doable, but it will take creativity.

The rigidizer helps for longevity, making the fiber stiff enough that it doesn't flex and then crack off your ITC. It's all consumable in the long run, but it's a good idea to do rigidizer, then a reflective coating.

This is about right. You'll also need something to work as a set screw to hold the nipple inplace. The 1/8" nipple can be any length, this length is probably your minimum. Go to the electrical department of your big box store and look for a threaded coupler for the 3/4" pipe. It'll be shiny, most likely, so you'll need to pickle it in muiratic acid to eat the zinc off. The 3/4" pipe will be threaded on both ends - that's how it comes commercially in the big box stores. The z burner is a good little burner - but it's loud. J The threaded coupler will be your flare nozzle.

Unifrax (a brand of refractory board) is manufactured in Alberta, so there should be a dealer somewhere on your side of canada.