Due to the extremely high fire danger in my state right now. I don't want to fire up the coal forge. But I've got a project that I was hoping to have done by Labor day so I'm thinking about make a quick and dirty Venturi Brick forge  so that I can do some fish tail scrolls on 2"x3/8" flat stock for a fire place grill I'm making for my families cabin.

I saw a quick, yet not necessarily efficient 3/4" venturi burner using mostly Gas BBQ parts. I don't need forge welding heat, just need to get hot enough to shape the metal relatively easily. 

I want to use my 20# Propane bottle, and some fire bricks I've already got. My idea is to weld up an Angle Iron frame for the bricks to fit into with a remove-able brick in the back so I can pass stock through if needed. I want the interior space of the forge to be 8"x4"x4". Is that big enough, to big, or possibly just right? I want to make the forge a top blast for simplicity. 

Can someone tell me what I might be missing to do this build? I understand that the regulator needs to be able to handle 10 PSI+ and that I should have a valve after the regulator to control the gas flow. Apart from an inefficient venturi burner, am I missing something?

Forbidden as usual.

One issue I ran into building my wine rack was the interior size of the gas forge. I could just barely get the 4 3/4" rings into  forge on an angle if I couldn't get the bends done in one heat. When I went to try and do 5" rings, I had to use both the gas forge ( to evenly heat a long length of stock to do as much of the bend as possible), but then had to stick the partially bent ring into the coal forge because the ring wouldn't fit any longer in the gas forge.

 

I'm not sure what size scrolls you are looking to make. Just keep final size in mind just in case you have to reheat something and need to stick the whole piece inside the forge again.

I also know when I tried to make my brick forge out of standard fire brick vs insulating bricks, that the brick mass soaked up a ton of heat and it took forever to get hot. Not sure what type of bricks you have to work with. My single burner really wasn't enough to deal with the large brick mass I had. I really needed two burners if not 3.

Edited August 29, 201510 yr by DSW

New design Frosty "T-Burner" in "more stupid questions from a Newbie".  1/2". 

Here's my forge. Just need to attach a pipe to the blower

 

Mod:

Since you have not already noticed, we have an entire section devoted to gas (?)   forges, I will relocate this there for you.  If you read the other posts there, you may find out why this is not going to work too well

 

What are we looking at here?  I know the admins think it's a gas forge, but you said blower, and it looks more like a workable base for a side blast forge (just needs some creative trimming and a lot of clay/sand/dirt/something), but it's missing the tuyere.  I can't figure out what the...refrigerator coil?...is for.

Its a charcoal forge. The coils are from a sofa machine so they're ideal to get the air from the blower to the embers.

Edited August 29, 201510 yr by Tempered Warrior

What is a sofa machine ?

Looks more like a compressor than a blower to me. If coils are copper may not hold up to forging temperatures. Will be an interesting experiment. 

I meant soda fountain. The coils are stainless steel, and have a slight hole for water. So I can use it for air transport. And it is deffinenty a blower

Edited August 30, 201510 yr by Tempered Warrior

On my side blast I'm using 3/4 pipe for the air, I know you're enthusiastic but I don't think she's gonna work.

J

I know I'm not very knowledgeable about this but I think it will work. I got this aluminum pipe red hot with out a blower

One issue I ran into building my wine rack was the interior size of the gas forge. I could just barely get the 4 3/4" rings into  forge on an angle if I couldn't get the bends done in one heat. When I went to try and do 5" rings, I had to use both the gas forge ( to evenly heat a long length of stock to do as much of the bend as possible), but then had to stick the partially bent ring into the coal forge because the ring wouldn't fit any longer in the gas forge.

 

I'm not sure what size scrolls you are looking to make. Just keep final size in mind just in case you have to reheat something and need to stick the whole piece inside the forge again.

I also know when I tried to make my brick forge out of standard fire brick vs insulating bricks, that the brick mass soaked up a ton of heat and it took forever to get hot. Not sure what type of bricks you have to work with. My single burner really wasn't enough to deal with the large brick mass I had. I really needed two burners if not 3.

So, would you recommend some sort of refractory applied to the inside of the bricks?

As for the interior space, I thought of that. The scrolls will be fairly tight, at less than 2" in diameter so I think my interior space of 4"x4" should be able to account for that. 

Also, for gas forges, is a top blast better than a side blast? or would it be best to have it enter at more or less a corner to try to make the heat flow more around the interior of the forge vs hitting a surface and deflecting out in all directions?

I'll leave suggestions on coatings and so on to people like Frosty who have a lot more experience than I do. I was mostly making sure that you had enough space inside when you were talking about scrolls.

So well, you're hitting about 975F, but you've got to double that for most steel. Aluminum also conducts heat differently. If you want to forge steel we're looking for 1600-2100F just to be safe, and even then you'll want more for welding.

J

Keep in mind a "black" heat on steel is still about 1000 deg, so you haven't even got any color in steel at that point yet.