Built my first gas forge!

[Frosty]

You know Dave when we over emphasize hazards it tends to make folk under emphasize things they shouldn't. this is why you don't see caution signs on the road everywhere, too many and motorists start disregarding them all. Same reason we didn't thurn on the strobes unless we were doing something that darned well needed early warning.

 

Then there's the effects of warning people about an issue and NOT taking proper precautions for that level hazard. For instance, were you wearing a paper class 1 hazmat overall, gloves taped to the sleeves and a hepa, full face filter mask? OR were you wearing neoprene gloves, plain filter mask, open sleeves and safety glasses? Seriously inadequate PPE for the level hazard you were warning about. NOTHING kills a person's regard for warnings like seeing the person making them disregarding them.

 

The last 10 years I worked for highways maintenance I was required to carry current hazmat certifications just shy of nuclear waste. Why? Have you ever noticed who is on the front lines with the fire dept if there's a hazardous spill? Yeah DOT Highways guys and gals, we have the equipment and training to go in and first contain then cleanup. My hazmat response PPE was hanging in my locker with my every day orange coveralls and there were emergency spill showers in 6 places in the shop bays with floor drains feeding directly into grease and hazmat traps.

 

I certainly appreciate you warning people about a hazardous material or process but keeping such warnings accurate is much better policy. Sometimes we have to put our feelings aside to be truly effective.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Dave Hammer]

Frosty....   Suit yourself.  

[Harris Snyder]

Did some surgery on the forge today. Made the 2 inches of kaowool go all the way around and put in a thinner forge floor. Seems to get hotter. Still can't achieve welding heat over more than a 2 inch circle under the burner but maybe thats cause my regulator only goes up to 25 lbs. Ah well, that's okay. I can weld with charcoal. It would remove the temptation to just weld a part as soon as its done without cooling it an properly cleaning the edges. Since it requires a different fire and all.

[Harris Snyder]

More surgery - made the chamber a little smaller by padding the floor with more kaowool. Have not attempted welding heat but was fine at bright orange-y almost yellow at 10 psi, so we're getting better. Sorry for big images I wanted to show detail in case anyone has any suggestions. Please Ignore the weird bent bar sticking into the forge I actually don't remember why that was there. I usually use bricks to close up the opening a bit, but I only have one in the pictures so you can see what's going on.

 

 

 

[Frosty]

That's looking much better Harris you're getting it tweeked in.

 

Your gauge will live longer if you put it at the other end of the supply hose and a 1/4 turn ball valve is much better at the burner. They turn on and off in a quick flip so it's easy to shut it off in a hurry. It looks like you have a needle valve there now, you can put it at the other end with the gauge and it'll still serve as well if a tad slower.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Harris Snyder]

Yeah. Well honestly if I'm going to replace the burner I'll just replace that whole assembly at the same time. I'm thinking the next step would be ITC-100... sound good? or should I go after the burner first and see if I can get a performance improvement there?

[Frosty]

There's no reason to replace everything, just the burner is enough. No reason spending more than necessary. Heck, we don't know the burner has anything but a little adjustment problem. You're getting close enough you do NOT want to start changing more than one thing at a time. If you change several you'll never know what did what. The slowest way to find something is to search every direction at once.

 

ITC-100 is a good move, the more heat you keep in the chamber the less fuel you need to raise it and hold it. Besides you'll only be replacing a burner if that, not the whole forge. If you use the right flux and good technique you can weld at high orange.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[knots]

Lots of heat being lost out of the open front of your forge.   My appologies if I missed something but some sort of closure of the end of the forge is needed to achieve the full heat potential of your forge.  Insulating fire brick stacked to limit the opening size would help.  Alternatively build a door.  Enclosed are a couple of examples of door types.

[knots]

I now see where you said that you use bricks to "close the opening a bit"   How about showing us the brick closure as you use it.   Gettting it closed as tightly as possible at the top of the opening is important.  How about  a picture after dark so we can see how the forge exhausts ?  

 

The mass of the forge floor liner is importanat because it acts as a heat sink.  Having a floor that stores heat will take longer to bring the forge up to forging temperature but once hot will transfer heat to the work piece efficiently .   

[Harris Snyder]

Thanks I'll post a pic like you described.

[Frosty]

Zircopax kaolin clay forge coating progress.

 

I finished washing my forge and some new soft fire bricks today and it'd dried sufficiently for a test firing in a few hours. This neck of Alaska has very low humidity and a fan dried the wash to chalky dry in a few hours. So I bisque fired it, bringing it up to high red and letting it cool. Even less than bone dry it came to high red in under five minutes.

 

The next firing brought it up to yellow heat in about 6 minutes, it heated much faster but I credit a lot of that to the forge not being ambient temp but around 150f. I could put my hand inside but wasn't about to touch. I let it burn at mid yellow for about an hour and shut it down. I'll let you know what it looks like, how friable or soft it is now.

 

I followed Phil Krankow's 70% Zircopax : 30% kaolin ratio, sort of. My kaolin is a thin slip so I added zircopax till it was the consistency of thick gravy. I buttered the bricks and painted on the wash but needed to thin it a bit more so it'd fill the voids.

 

I'm using the same basic mix as ITC-100, kaolin being far more resistant to molten borax than silica compounds. Kaolin is also non-toxic, you can in fact eat kaolin. Heck, lots of us have, kaopectate is kaolin clay and pectin, well it used to be. This mix has so little silica as to make it a low level respiratory hazard when dry. A good filter mask and safety glasses are called for.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Harris Snyder]

Well I didn't have a chance to take any pictures, but I did get it to weld today. I took a 1/4 inch by 2 inches bar and folded it over on itself a few times and welded it into a brick. The welds aren't perfect, but it does seem to be pretty solidly stuck together. Was a pretty big mass, so it was at 20+ psi for the welds, but I bet it could weld smaller pieces at 15.

 

I also learned that molten borax eats kaowool (and shirts).. no surprise really I guess...

 

It also makes it easier to brush scale off... molten borax that is.

[Frosty]

Good deal Harris! Fagot welding wide stock is a good place to use a turning(rounding) hammer so initial impact is in the center so any inclusions are driven out of the joint. You also might get better fusion at lower psi and longer soak time.

 

The psi settings is just a thought. I've found you can be melting the outside of a stack before the inside is hot enough to fuse so lower psi and longer soak time is the way to go in that situation.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Frosty]

Zircopax/kaolin forge wash report. Last Saturday a friend and I demoed at a local event keeping the forge running at high orange low yellow for about 9 hrs. That side is nicely fired and tough as nails hard. It kept good color on lower than average psi so we didn't use more than about 3 gallons of propane.

 

I'm thinking it's a success though I haven't welded in it yet. I'll let you know how that goes when I do. I try not to weld at demos, too much flying hot stuff for audiences and I don't have a screen at the moment.

 

Frosty The Lucky.