December 24, 201411 yr Well had a long post regarding this written, then the system crashed when I tried to upload a couple of images. Won't try to recreate the whole post, but am thrilled to announce that I tried my first forge weld in my low pressure, natural gas fired forge and was successful. The local experts said it couldn't be done... The forge is a modified compressed air tank from Harbor Freight, with a Kane Bros 140 CFM blower and industrial grade burner, mixer and zero pressure regulator. Lining is 2" of high temp blanket with furnace cement and ITC coatings. Bubble alumina trough will hopefully resist inevitable flux deposits. Images uploaded are of the forge in a slightly earlier incarnation, it now has a high alumina brick hearth and I use a similar brick to close down the rather too large opening. Forge gets up to a good yellow heat, just enough to weld the mild steel I tried without burning it at all (will add pyrometer when I get to final piping, current layout is just for testing). I used Black Magic Flux and kept my surfaces clean. Still working on the atmosphere mix as even though I had a pretty long reduction flame exiting the opening I still got more scaling than I liked. Very excited. Next step Cable Damascus...
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