I care about the best possible results for a given task. Who says what, or who "wins" stopped meaning beans to me after the first stroke. The second one convinced me not to waste time on  meaninglessness.

Yeah, winning only counts sort of, when you're playing games. We have a few goofy ones we play when we're stopped in the RV, "Exploding Kittens" is silly fun but I can't remember how to play "Cribbage." <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.

Hill? What hill. I don't remember any hill...

It's where your pitches, lawn bowling go the farthest. Best I can figure it's been 43-45 years since I climbed a ski hill with a hang glider and dove off it. 

I remember hill, a REALLY remember a few of them! I think the tree knocked some sense into me.

Frosty The Lucky.

Well, if ya gotta go, that sounds like as much fun as we could ask for.

I have noticed a surge in the number of views in the early spring, and then again in early fall; it seems logical that in spring there would be a surge of interest in burners, and in fall a surge of interest in the forges they will heat. And the number of burner questions in spring appears to back that idea up. Yet, in fall, the increase in views isn't accompanied with questions at all.

This seems strange.

Mikey could it be their looking back at the answer they were given?

You're asking the wrong guy. Last week is the mysterious past for me

I finally got the forge fired up again and I got some photos in better lighting. There actually is some visible dragon's breath, I just couldn't see it in the bright sun.

That's just after I lit it. Looks like a pretty good flame to me.

Not exactly in focus but you can see how hot it's getting and there's still some blue flame visible in there.

That's the dragon's breath. There's a similar amount coming out of the back vent. Fairly minimal and pale orange. That means it's running pretty well, right?

I'd have some photos of it running in the dark but I stopped early because the soft fire brick floor of the forge started breaking to pieces from my tongs hitting it. I'll have to move redoing the insulation in there up the priority list.

Looks pretty good ymber, it looks REALLY hot for a daylight pic. 

If you can find them I recommend, "Morgan Ceramics k-26" fire brick and a final kiln was to toughen it up more. 

Time to put it to work, let us know how it works please. 

Frosty The Lucky

It's been working pretty well for me. On thin (~5mm) stock it will heat it up to pale yellow in 15 seconds if I remember to put a fire brick over the front.

Just made that last night. The ends were supposed to be more fishtail looking but I was using an oversized cross peen hammer and I couldn't get a good angle with it. It turns out there's a box of old rusty hammer heads at this shop and one of them is ideal for what I needed so I'm fixing it up. I just need to sand, fit, and oil the new handle. The next project is tongs because none of the ones already here are very good. I need to make some big enough to hold a hammer head and then I want to turn another one of the old hammer heads into a hot cut hardy. That should be a good test of how this forge handles bigger chunks of metal.

I've not been able to source any Morgan bricks in this country but I've found some that will do the job just as well. My sticking point is kiln wash. I've asked around a bunch of different ceramics suppliers and nobody can source Plistix and none of them know of any similar hard firing, high alumina kiln washes that you can get here.

What do folk coat their kilns with? Bare brick is too expensive to replace every couple few firings. Try looking for "Martikote." Morgan Thermal Ceramics sells refractories and similar in the UK though I don't recall the name, they have a retailer locater on their website. Unfortunately the company itself only sells in bulk but the retailers sell reasonable lots. 

K 26 fire brick is a better choice but alumina kiln shelf works very well and is robust, it can be expensive though.

Frosty The Lucky 

There is a Morgan distributor in Merseyside but they don't take small orders and as far as I can find they're the only UK distributor for Morgan. I can easily get Vitcas bricks though and they should perform pretty much the same.

Martikote isn't giving me any hits either. I did find another kiln manufacturer and ceramic supplies distributor to ask while I was looking though. There's something called Batt wash that's high alumina but it doesn't look like it fires hard. Apart from that it looks like people in this country mostly mix their own kiln washes.

That is because of a little typo.  search Matrikote instead.

Oey Vei!   WHAT were my fingers thinking?

Matrikote it is, thanks Lee.

I have no personal experience with Vitcas Insulating fire brick but it looks good. There are legal reasons companies change  product names in different countries. 

Morgan should be able to tell you who carries their products at a retail level. Use the telephone and talk to the nice person who answers. Asking questions on a website contact button is a better way of dying alone and lonely than getting an answer to a question. The guy answering emails is there to sell train loads or warehouse lots. One of the guys inn our club buys K-26 fire brick by the pallet load and has to go through a local retailer. 

Frosty The Lucky

I can't find anyone selling matrikote in Britain. At this point I think I'm going to have to mix my own kiln wash. I'll call the Morgan distributor and see if they have a list of smaller retailers when they're open again next week.

It looks like I was wrong about what happened to the fire bricks. I thought they were cracking from getting hit with tongs but the burner is actually melting them. I guess if it can turn refractory bricks to liquid it's burning hot enough.

You can always replace the brick with a high alumina kiln shelf, or a thigh alumina cast refractory layer. If you can't find Kast-O-lite 30 refractory, the addition of some bubble alumina to any other high alumina cast refractory will do the same job. However, Morgan's new line of insulating refractory bricks, along with a layer of any convenient sealing coating, such as Plistix 900 (or the locally sold equivalent), will also do the job.

The old standard insulating fire brick is only good to around 1200f You should've seen the look on the guys faces where I buy refractory, IFB, etc. when I told them hot hot my forge got. One of the burners on my too large shop forge is a golden bullet, It started vitrifying the 3,000f split brick I used for under the burner before the rest of the chamber came to temp. Now it just makes a gooey pool sort of thing under the burner. 

Anyway, the guys at DI told me they didn't carry the IFBs I was replacing anymore, try the new ones. Morgan K-26 AND they were just a b it more than 1/3 the price!  I use the IFBs for moveable side and partition walls and the old ones would start to crumble after two firings if I were lucky and they'd turn right to gravel in 4-5. The only K-26s that have broken were dropped on the floor. 

A good home made kiln wash is IIRC 97% zirconium silicate flour and 3% Bentonite clay. It's a well tested and documented recipe by Maarten of "Monkey Forge" a member here. 

Frosty The Lucky

I think my next full size forge will have to be a "D" shape with small burners near the floor, and facing upward.

One of the guys in our club has been making forges with the burners near one wall aimed up for quite a while and they're very effective. No D shapes yet though. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I think that both oval and "D" forges are very convenient shapes for getting the most out of the area being heated. Oval forges are likey best of these two for traveling, and  "D" forges  are better shape for a shop forge. But, the "D" shape is far less work for most people to build.

I've used D shapes but don't have one. I travel with a box of K-26 bricks and a rolling cart or perhaps the NARB forge. Truth is my 20+ year old WAY too large shop forge handles most of what I need even if I rarely use more than 50% of the space. 

One of these days I MAY take it apart and pour a Kastolite floor, it's current 3,000f split hard brick floor tends to melt into a gooey pool under the burners. 

I've been thinking about building another shop forge but it does what I need. NARB or a brick pile works great at demos. Nobody is intimidated by a brick pile forge, we've had folk attend meetings to take a shot at it as a result. I don't believe I've ever gotten a call when using the big forge. NARB a couple times maybe. 

I just don't do a lot of smithing since the accident so new equipment ideas don't get past dimensioned concept sketches. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Well, I built lots of equipment for the first book, and then left it all with my publisher. I plan to build completely different equipment for the present book, which I'm stumbling and bumbling away at.

I plan to read your next book and admire the ew equipment. I'm sure I won't bumble or stumble through it. Heck, I might even build something in it. Probably not without tinkering around with it though. I can't help it.

Frosty The Lucky.

If you didn't improve on anything you find in it, I would be disappointed. When the day comes that we agree completely, one of us will be one too many