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Heat treating furnace design.


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Would this work? 1" thick inswool/kaowool coated with satanite refractory all around the inside, burner port at one end, with a fire brick in fornt of the flame to disperse/baffle the heat, with the blades never extending over the firebrick and flame itself. ID is 10 inches, would this be suitable for heating blades nice and even to the proper temperature? I would use just the PSI valve to control the heat with a thermocouple to measure how hot inside it is and control it from there. I know it wouldn't be as good as salts or an electric oven or kiln, a bit oxidysing, maybe a bit uneven heat but much more ideal than using just the forge.

4549.attach

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seems kinda deep with alot of wasted space, unless the blade is proportionate to a smaller blade.. but I'm assuming it is a full length-28in +/- so ya.. Don-fogg has a controlled propane heat treating furnace, but I cant remember what it looked like.

wouldn't the blueprint for the tube furnace or whatever it was where the burner blasted down the length of the forge instead of through the side work relatively well also?

anyway, nice rough design!

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exactly what I was thinking^^

I have a feeling he would just lay the kaowool in place to be held down by the refractory(which you might want to do without if possible). Refractories are usually more just as a protection from flux, and I have found kaolwool to distribute and achieve heat faster than firebrick and satanite refractory.

cool stuff man.
you might also want multiple burners too..I dont know how you would engineer that, but ya.. more heat disperesed.

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yes well, theres the dillema.. even your design will have a hot spot near the rear of the furnace.. that fire brick will absorb alot of the heat, and the entry (front) will be a considerable ammount cooler. really, you need more than one burner to disperse the heat more evenly. As you've said, you do not want to heat with the flame, but it is nearly un-avoidable with this sort of system. If you had a seperate air heating furnace that circulated the heat through the box at high temps, thats different.. but highly un-efficient, and you could just as easily be using salts..

seriously check out Don foggs.. I'll root around for the picture.

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Why not make an electric heat treating oven? In fact I thought a lot of knife makers used a normal domestic oven to heat treat? If you can get the guts of one a simple kiln type box around lightweight refractory bricks would work well IMO. The refractory bricks are much better than the standard refractory in a cooker so it would probably get a lot hotter too, but remain 'dialable'. I've seen designs somewhere for a really nice electric furnace on the net. Think it was one of the british knife forums.

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I don't know as though a grill burner would give the heat needed here but you could actually make a burner similar to them but much more high performance, you could make it the appropriate length for you "oven" and have it put out a lot more heat, larger holes more gas and more air.
You could definitely get a more even heat with that style burner, as far as them being cheaper.....that I guess depends on where you shop and how much you can scavenge up, I've build somwhere around 8-10 propane burners and have yet to spend a dime....not trying to brag or rub it in anyone's face. just making the point that if you srounge around enough you can do almost anything with very little or no $.

welder19

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  • 4 months later...

One thing that you could do to help controll the build up of scale is to put a choke plate on the buner and run a slightly rich flame. For the little bit of scale that will form you can get most of it off by soaking it in white vinagar for a few days. then take it out and rinse it off with lots of water and a 3M pad ie green scruby.

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  • 1 year later...

Welcome aboard Simonsch, glad to have you.

The blacksmithing bug can get you pretty easy alright, a one exposure infection is not uncommon.

It's okay though, you're in good company, most of us here are addicted to blacksmithing, I have been since I was a kid and there are no signs I'm getting over it.

Anyway, there is plenty of good reading here, check out the getting started and lessons in blacksmithing in the "Blueprints" section. They'll help you get a shop set up and provide some good exercises to help you learn the craft.

Frosty

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