Hello everyone, i have been lurking this forum for a couple months now becoming more and more excited about the trade. I have be building a gas forge for about a month secretly at work. The body is from a 6" argone bottle i got from our airgas rep. then cut it to a 24" section, spilt it down the middle and tig welded a 3" section to make it a 24x10x6 body. Im going with 2 venturi side arm burners 3/4 every thing is welded with 309L and xrayed just for kicks. I am lacking the kaowool and firebricks and also the itc. But as soon as i get those in i will post pics of the finish product. i could go on with more info but ill just let you see..

 

 

Congrats on your first forge build!  That's a big first step into blacksmithing.  You're fortunate to have welding skills and equipment, that'll make the project a lot easier.  I wasn't able to open your pictures, but it sounds like you have a pretty decent plan of attack for this thing.  I would encourage you to reconsider the 24" length of your forge.  That is A LOT of space to heat up, even with two burners.  Two burners in a chamber that long will probably not give you an even heat on your metal, and you will go through a lot of fuel trying to get the heat you want.  The other reason why such a long forge chamber is usually unnecessary is because you can only work so much metal at one time.  On average a smith can only work on 4-6 inches at a time before losing heat.  Even my biggest forge only has a 10 inch long chamber, and my smallest is 8 inches long.  I can forge anything from tongs to tomahawks to hammers.  Remember, the shorter your chamber is, the less time and fuel it will take to heat up your steel, which means more time forging for you.

Ok well, I ordered the wool and bricks ill see how much room that leaves me with, and reply with some measurements, if anything I can always section it and re weld it.. thanks for your input

The Only thing I see wrong with it is it Should Have Three (3) Burners in it . you may find that it is very hard to reach forging temp evenly. as for lining the forge there are many blue prints and How  to do on the site here it will save you money in the long run . Trying-it (Stan) makes some really supper nice forges and has a ton of information he would help you out i am sure .

 

Excellent Welding and Fab Job on the forge by the way .

 

Sam

What if i were to put another burner on the other side in between the two exisiting  with the same angle? So all three would be aimed in the same direction just the middle one would be closer to the other wall as far as the angle goes. Cause the way they are space now if i were to put  another burner there the spacing wouldn't be even or does the spacing really matter? My thinking is if there pointing at the same angle then that would allow for it to vortex inside....

 Any ideas would be awesome!!

Looks awesome Tig very clean work!

Tig use soapstone to mark where you are looking at adding it to your forge. even though I would reset the three (3) burners evenly spaced myself ()---()---() like such and patch the old holes . the forge would run better and optimal forging temp would be obtained very fast and efficiently if you did it this way . IMHO

 

Sam

Greetings Welder,

 

Looks like a fine job... You should be proud... Give some thought to the propane plumming if you put a burner on the other side..  My personal feeling is that two burners with that design would be fine.

 

Good luck     Jim

Awesome bit of fabrication! 

 

As for the length, it depends on what you want to do with the forge.  If you're trying to bring long blades up to temp for heat-treating and tempering, then I can see it working well.  

 

If you're going to be starting out learning general blacksmithing, making hooks, scrolls and basic tools, then it's way too big.  You'll be burning a metric ton of gas to heat that entire chamber when you can only reasonable hammer on a small portion of the metal at any given time.  A forge half that length, with that beautiful oval cross-section, would be great with just one burner.

 

And if you want to make another one, I would be interested in discussing the purchase of said forge......

Welcome aboard Tigger, glad to have you.

 

Very pro looking piece of welding and I believe you'll go down in Iforge history as the only blacksmith to have a forge with xrayed welds. I'd have to consider doing it just so I could say I did. <grin>

 

I'm afraid it's going to have a pretty small cross section once you've put the kaowool and floor in it. My only other bit of critique is you don't need anything like that heavy gauge steel for a forge shell. I usually recommend 8"-10" SS stovepipe and 2" of Kaowool, length as desired.

 

That's just my opinion though. The obvious quality of your work stands on it's own merit. Well done. Sorry about the "Tigger" crack, I couldn't pass on the straight line.

 

Frosty The lucky

Thanks for all your thoughts and ideas. Luckily I still have the other half of the pipe so I'm going to start small with a 10" forge instead.. thanks again tigger

Ok so I thought about it and when I finally had some free time at work. I pulled out the plasma and cut the 2 pipes out and am going to put 3 new holes with 5 inches between them hopefully this works.. I also had time to build a ten inch forge with some scrap 1 inch( over kill I know)

Here the pics of small but stupid thick and improved old forge with rack extensions for long material and a mounting bracket for plumbing of burners

improved forged

Nice fab work!  Adding the third burner will give it a more even heat. Just a suggestion. I don' know on how you plan to plumb it? I you make it so you use 1,2, or 3 burners at a time. It will be more versitile and use less fuel dependin on what you are doing. you can cut a custom size brick to put inside to cut yor chamber size down.

Awesome work, Tig.  That almost reminds me of something you'd see in a starship's engine compartment.  Maybe to secure the dilithium crystals prior to insertion into the fusion chamber.

 

If you can create a similarly wonderful manifold that allows you to cut the feed to the burners independently, you can use that one forge for work big and small simply by shutting one or two burners off.  Of course, you'll have to make a sliding wall that shrinks the chamber size, too.  But that would be small potatoes for someone of your obvious skill.

Tig,

 

the forge looks very good I hope to see some of your work soon ,

 

Best Regards

 

Sam

Thanks guys I can't wait to start forging. I do plan on putting shut offs for all burners.

tig13,

 

Your work is an inspiration.  I am putting a list of "good looking" forge ideas together and you just made my list.  Keep us posted as you progress.

thanks guys