patrick Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Danger Dillon and others with large hammers doing large work: Would you mind describing the gas forges you use for work you are forging under the Niles, Bradley, or other large hammers? I will be building a new gas forge next year and have some ideas in mind, but I'd like to hear from other people doing large work. I am currently using a "brick pile" type of forge with two side mounted burners. These are run on forced air and propane. I don't have any problem getting the heat I want, but I am finding that the bricks don't take the thermal shock of start up and cool down very well. I have also used Kaowool lined forges and that worked OK, but eventually the steel shell oxided around the openings and I had to replace it. My current idea is to build something like an oversize Mankel horeshoeing forge-one that is open on 3 sides. I intend to close of one side with a removable wall so I can get large flat work when needed. The front and back would have smaller openings for drawing long straight work or accessing smaller pieces. My current forge design has a 14" x 24" x 6" interior and I find that I do use all of this volume for some jobs, especially when I have lots of peices to heat at once, so I would like to keep the forge around this size. I am not too concerned with gas consumption, since, at this size, you are going to burn a lot of gas. My current design burns a couple of gallons an hour when running full bore, but that is still relatively low cost. Your input is appreciated. Patrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fe-Wood Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Frosty has an interesting forge he designed. Very adjustable. Frosy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judson Yaggy Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 Frosty's and Ralph Sproul's look quite similar, a lot of guys around here use them. Here's a link to Ralph's, scroll down a little for the forge. Plans Available Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monstermetal Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 I suppose your right, a couple of gallons an hour seems like a lot of fuel to me but if your making money its not. I too am at this stage. I have three operational gas forges in the shop now... One being a Johnson 133.. The Johnson is a fuel hog, it will empty a 25 gal tank in half a day... I bought a big ribbon burner from Pine Ridge Pine Ridge Burners - Home Page I bought a LP390 and am using a blower that came from Kayne and sons.. I know a couple of other smiths with ribbon burners and I think they are pretty efficient for the amount of heat you get.. my guess is this one burner will produce more BTU's than the 4 burner in the Johnson. They give a chamber size of 1.5 to 3 cubic feet as a range for the burner.. so if the inside was 18" X 24" X 12" thats a pretty big forge... The only thing I have not figured out is how to make it re configurable. My first plan was to have the burner mouned in a castable refractery "lid" that was fixed in place, and have the lower part of the forge built on a cast refractery table with some moveable cast sides... and have the whole lower table crank up and down so you could make the cavity larger by dropping the table and adding bricks to seal the void... Seemed easier to run the bottom up and down since all the plumbing would go to the burner... I am thinking now for the sake of simplicity just doing a side mount burner.. so one wall and the floor would be castable the rest would basiclly be a brick pile.. maybe I would pour some movable walls that where contained in a stainless shell... the lid is the hard part... making it insulating, light and versatile could be a bit tricky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNewman Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 I built one of the forges designed by Ralph and I do like it. I have been thinking of changing it to a blown burner however. I have thought of either putting two small ribbon burners in the top where the burners currently are but I am leaning towards mounting them on the side as it would be simpler and a cleaner design. I think I would lean the burner up slightly to help spread the heat and give the flame a bit of a swirl. The reason I would go with 2 small burners is so that I could run one for a smaller configuration and 2 when larger. One thing I think I would do if I were building this forge now is to make the table at least 4" longer so that if I only want to take a shorter heat I have a table to support the other end of a bar on one side of the forge. I could then stack brick to slow the heat radiating to the rest of the bar. I would also have welded stock supports to each end, I will get around to that eventually but it would have been nice to do that when I built it before I painted it. I also have a Johnson forge out in the shed which I may bring in one of these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick Posted December 23, 2009 Author Share Posted December 23, 2009 Monstermetal, I checked out the Pine Ridge site. That is a very interesting burner option. How have you found that burner to perform in the lower temperature range? I do a lot of work with Mokume, but in fairly big sections, so I need to have good temp control in the range of 1400-1600 F. For steel I often forge in the 2300+ Range. My current burners are very simple-just a piece of 2" pipe with several smaller diameter pipe sections nested inside that to serve as a flame holder. I am able to get a pretty wide range of temperature with these burners. Last year I did a forge weld of six pieces of wrought iron bar (1x3x5.5) using these burners and we had no problems getting the whole billet up to a dripping heat. I don't normally run the forge that hot, but it is a nice feature for some projects. How is the ribbon burner with respect to oxidation? My burners do tend to generate quite bit of scale, which isn't usually a problem, but I have had several people comment on the difference in scaling between gas and coal forges. Patrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Sculpture Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 (edited) Sorry Patrick, I was looking in the wrong place, so much information and good work to see here. I am working out of NC 4 burner whisper daddy, NC 6 burner tunnel and 133 Johnson, I can run a couple at a time but they still cant keep me at a production rate. I have been unable to wrap my brain around the specifics but I have a good friend.... use to sell burners. Thinking 1000000 BTU, 3-4"x4" or a couple 6"x6". Do they have some calculation at Scot to figure this kind of thing? By the way what do think the hourly rate is under the big press at North America Forge Masters. NAFM Why does that phrase have such a appreciated sound to it? Larry, Pine ribbon have some excellent products, thanks. "Clench" 4" x 3/8" angle. "Knot" 2" round. Edited December 24, 2009 by Danger Dillon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jymm Hoffman Posted December 24, 2009 Share Posted December 24, 2009 (edited) Current 3 burner (that I can heat up 4" or so in it,) has about a 9 inch wide opening with a cut out for odd sizes. I was using a 2 burner welding up axes all day today. How big do you want to go? This system can be adapted to any size forge, just get a bigger blower and bigger orifice. It is run on propane at household pressure (barbecue regulator.) If you want it to heat up faster, you need good refractory material. Blanket covered with ram, thicker in the bottom to help radiate heat and the stuff I use is impervious to flux. 2 burner system uses about 1/2 gallon of propane per hour, could handle 3 inch square. Current 3 burner in use uses about 3/4 gallon of propane an hour and can probably handle 5 inch square. I have no problems with 3/4" by 5" in the 3 burner. So how big do you want to go? A friend in Buffalo has a large 2 burner version with a more powerful blower and much larger than mine. With the right blower and right refractory, this is simple to build and kicks butt. I recommend one burner tip per 6 inches of forge length. Although this is so simple some don't believe it works until they see it. I got the idea from my brother that is an engineer at Underwriters Laboratories, works in the burn department. When I had problems burning up commercially made burner tips asked him what they use. He said the guys in the shop just flatten a piece of pipe. It was so simple I had to try it. After about a year of burning out commercially made burner tips I switched to these and have not used any others since 1994, regardless of the size of the forge. As long as you keep some blanket packed around these burner tips, right to the edge, they last a very long time, years. If you send me a pm I will send you more information. Edited December 24, 2009 by Jymm Hoffman punctuation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick Posted December 29, 2009 Author Share Posted December 29, 2009 Guys, Thanks for all the input. The largest piece I heated so far is a 4x4x8 block and I did do the 3x6x5.5 billet i mentioned before. More often what I am doing is forging either a bunch of short sections, for expample 1" diameter x 4" long for tongs, but maybe having 10 of these in the forge at once, or bigger chunks for hardy or power hammer tooling. I get most of my raw material from work as scrap, so it is not unusuall for me to have odd shaped blocks that need to be forged into more useful sizes. I recently started a project in which I used two pieces of 2.25" round, 20" long each. With my current set up, I was able to heat both of these at the same time, then draw them out to 66". I was able to bend a nine inch diameter circle in these. Once I had the piece bent roughly 180 degrees, I was able to get it back in the forge and re-heat it to complete the bend. I've also done some forging of heavy plate (1.5-2" thick) x 4x6 for bases for some sculptures. I can definitly see myself doing more work like this since I really liked the way those pieces turned out. As you can see, my work varies enough that it is not easy to pick a single size to design around. I really don't do much welding, so I am not concerned about flux eating up the refractory. My primary problems are abrasion and cracking of the refractory materials. I have had very good success with a floor made from a layer of soft firebrick covered in hard brick. For a number of years I've used a ceiling much like the one Jim F. describes-Kaowool blanket compressed into a steel shell. That does work well. The biggest problem I've had is with the bricks I'm using for the walls cracking. Apparently they don't handle thermal shock very well. Another friend of mine with a similar brick pile forge has his forge lined with Kaowool board to shield the bricks from direct contact with the flame from the burners. He has found that to work very well and doesn't have the cracking problems I've encountered. To answer Micheal's question about rates on the Scot Forge presses: I don't know what they charge for the NAF press. A couple years ago Tom Joyce spent some time one two of our smaller presses in the Spring Grove, Il shop. I heard that he was charged $20 per minute, but I have not verified that number with our sales staff. I expect it is pretty accurate though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prburner Posted December 29, 2009 Share Posted December 29, 2009 I, like monstermetal, have also fooled around with a top mounted ribbon burner on an adjustable size forge. I was never happy with the results. Too complicated and not as versitle as I would have liked. Have been happy with my "brick pile" forge with a side mounted burner. The burner is fixed at one end of a table made from a castable refractory material. I stack up loose bricks for walls and use kiln shelves (covered with fiber blanket) for a roof. Easy to adjust size and heats up quick. Table size 27" x 22". Pine Ridge LP190 burner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted January 4, 2010 Share Posted January 4, 2010 There's a another, similar, burner that I ran across, the Giberson Head. I have zero experience with it, but ran across it some time ago. Their site, if nothing else, has lots of great burner information. http://www.joppaglass.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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