cheap once in awhile gas forge

[samw1]

Hi all, I am making a small gas propane stacked firebrick forge. Im also going to be customizing it later for sheet steel work. now I have it all built and had first fire but it did not get hot enough. I think i have a burner issue but im puttin up pics so you guys can give me a hand here. The last photo is the burner im using. Any help is usefull thanks all.

[Dave Hammer]

You will have better luck if you use soft firebrick. Hard firebrick takes a LONG time to heat up. I'm not sure that propane torch will put out enough BTU's to heat a forge.

[pkrankow]

Look up building a burner, there are many designs to choose from.

I agree with the hard firebrick being a problem too, it is not very insulating and takes a long time to heat up.

If you need a very small forge, you can use the torch you pictured and hollow out one or two soft fire bricks to make a cavity that is meant for 1/4 inch stock, or so. The same torch can be used with some ceramic wool insulation in a "bean can" to create a small, useful forge for small stock.

Your design is also very large. A single 3/4 inch pipe burner is meant for up to 350 cubic inches of cavity, with a minimum of about 150 cubic inches of cavity (maybe less). You need about 4 square inches of combined exhaust space for the burner to function.

http://zoellerforge....legasforge.html
http://ronreil.abana.org/sitemap.html
http://www.iforgeiro...-and-made-this/
http://www.iforgeiro...n-burner-video/

I use one of those bricks with an inch of ceramic wool under it as my forge floor for my gas forge, 1 inch of ceramic wool on the back end, 2 inches of ceramic wool for all other sides.


http://www.iforgeiro...rick-gas-forge/
http://www.iforgeiro...ck-forge-shell/
http://www.iforgeiro...mple-gas-forge/

Phil

[MattBower]

Big forge with hard firebrick and a small burner. You need better insulation, plus a much smaller forge and/or a much bigger burner.

[Frosty]

Your burner is better suited to a bean can or single fire brick volume forge. The rule of thumb being One 3/4" burner for every 300-350 cu/in volume provided it's not too long a space. A 1" burner is twice the heat output of a 3/4" and so on.

A brick pile forge is a long accepted forge and while soft fire brick heats up faster it's more delicate, especially at heat and doesn't carry the same specific heat. Of course specific heat is what makes one come to heat faster but what we use does most of it's stock heating with radiated IR, not the burner directly. The burner heats the forge liner and the liner heats the iron.

Frosty the Lucky.

[JamesBBrauer]

I'll chime in and recommend a bigger burner as well: were I going to upgrade one thing to get that forge hotter, that would be it. I use hard brick for forge floors, and doors, and have lined walls with them using Kaowool behind that. They do take a while to get hot, but once they are hot they radiate heat really well, and are fairly durable. Plus, they are one of the few refractories that are pretty easy to find at the local hardware store. To that end, the local availability of parts is one of the nice things about DIY burners.