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I Forge Iron

Black Iron Pipe?


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Hello Everyone, 

I am thinking of doing some modifications to my Ugly Drum Smoker.  I am going to need to heat (in my gas forge) and bend 3 sections of black iron pipe.  I am always a little worried about heating up unknown steels (especially when they have an exterior coating).  From what I have read black iron pipe is usually some type of mild steel.    It usually looks like it is painted black but it is some type of weather resistant paint/varnish.  I believe it will burn off in the forge fairly quickly.  Has anyone forged black pipe before?  Did you soak it in some type of solvent to remove the coating first?  

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You're fine, about the only precaution I'd recommend is opening the doors while the coating burns off. It smokes a little but doesn't seem particularly noxious, lots of folk weld black iron without special equipment.

Frosty The Lucky.

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1 hour ago, intrex said:

 From what I have read black iron pipe is usually some type of mild steel.

I know it threads easy and I've welded it many times inside and out.  If it smokes as someone said open the doors and Windows and start a fan to be safe.  It use to smoke when threading but that was mostly the cutting oil we  used. 

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The problem with hot bending pipe, is its tendency to collapse. The trick for overcoming this problem, is to fill the pipe with fine gravel before you heat it.

I say fine gravel rather than sand, because sand might turn to glass inside the pipe.

 

.

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Quite safe.  I like to work with it!  Slight bends are no problem.  For sharp bends of small radii I like to forge it to smaller diameter in the bend area.  Forging to smaller diameter mostly thickens the pipe walls.  As the walls thicken it starts to behave more like rod than tube!  Kind of hybrid when just forged to slightly smaller diameters.

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Thanks for all of the feedback.  I ordered everything last night.  Man they sure are proud of that pipe, its pricey.  I will use the fine gravel trick for sure.  The pipe supplies the air flow to the smoker so I need to make sure it stays as open as possible. This is going to be pretty tricky because I am trying to essentially form a circle of pipe that joins 3 intake pipes into one.  I have a good plan of attack for the project and and will post pictures if it is successful.  

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I am using black iron pipe because the rest of the smoker is already black iron and this circular piece is going to connect to the existing piping.  What I am hoping to accomplish is really hard to explain without drawings and it is all just in my head right now. 

The circle is actually going to be six separate pieces that will all be connected with 3 interconnects and 3 T pieces.  Each of the six pieces is 1 foot long and will have a 60 degree radius on them (hopefully).  The circle needs to be slightly larger than the full diameter of a 55 gallon barrel.  I am planning to form a jig with flat bar using the radius of a scrap barel that I have.  Then put the Jig in my pole vice and use a torch to heat up and bend each of the pipes.  I will probably end up having to hot fit some of the pieces together while screwing them into the interconnects.  It is going to be tricky but I think doable. Hopefully it doesn't turn into $100 of black pipe scrap.  

Thanks for the quenching warning.  I wasn't planning to quench them at all but I am sure that has gotten more than 1 person in the past.  

 

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When I was a young man ( back in the Stone Age ) I worked as a Compositor in a print shop, that did both letterpress and offset printing.

All those pots of molten lead sitting around, was too much of a temptation for a foolish youngster like me. So before long, I found myself pouring lead into a hole drilled in the end of a billy club.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.  :rolleyes:

But several seconds into the pour, residual moisture in the wood, caused a little steam explosion down inside the hole, that sprayed molten lead back out the end of the billy club.

Not much fun at all.

However, if you work around line-casting machines for long, you get used to being "squirted" with molten lead.

Still, ... That happen sometime around 1970, and I still remember it well.

So I guess it made a lasting impression.  :P

 

.

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GOOD WARNING!! Never quench HOT pipe, it'll shoot a stream of scalding hot water across the shop except you know WHO is in the way!

If you use gravel or sand be sure it's river gravel/sand NOT crushed. If crushed the sharp angular pieces WILL key together and it isn't going to move without crushing further. Be sure to leave a little gap if you weld plugs in the ends to allow steam to escape or you've made a pipe bomb.

I guess I should've just asked but you really made me do a lot of reading to find out what radius you want to bend. Do you have a Porta Power, a winch, handy man jack, etc.?

If so you can cut a circle from plywood (for one off bends) I like cutting 3 one THE ID of the circle the other two about 1/2" longer radius. Carefully screw and glue them together to look like a pully, this is your bending die. You anchor the die so it'd destruct before it moves in a sliding motion.

Cut a length of pipe that'll make about 1/2 the circumference or less though more is better for leverage reasons. Now lace a length of winch cable or cable you can connect to the porta power. Brace the Porta power or winch against the die and engage it. The cable will draw the pipe around the die without krimping it.

This works with surprisingly tight radiuses. I've kept this trick on the ready self of my mental tool kit for the day I need it since I watched a logging crew smoothly bend 4-5" black iron pipe around a maybe 40" diameter tree with a D-9 Cat. I asked one of the guys how they kept the cable from cutting or bending pour spout shapes in the ends of the pipe and he said it wasn't really a problem. If it was they just allowed enough extra pipe to trim it clean or reinforced the inside with short sections of pipe to double the wall thickness.

Slick technique and it works a treat.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Very nice tip Frosty, my brain instantly designed a jig using a 2-1/2 ton floor jack hanging off the edge of my big bench. If that were not enough, I could easily swap in a twenty ton bottle jack.

Make jig for H-Frame press.

Cut a beefy plywood disk to fit snugly inside a 55 gal drum, use a ratcheting tie-down to strap a jack to one side of the drum, and use the opposite side of the drum as your bending mandrel. Run the cable through and start jacking. I speculate that this could be done either hot or cold. 

I did not catch what diameter pipe you are using.

All feel free to pick apart my impetuous blurt, 

Robert Taylor

Edited by Anachronist58
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Works cold I've never heard of anyone doing it hot. The closer to the ID of the pipe the cable is the less it CAN deform it and I've always wondered if motor cycle chain would work the trick on square tubing.

I have a grid of Gozintas in my shop floor I could probably do it the same way the loggers did using their cat. Anchor the die to a gozinta and hook the cable to the tow hitch on the pickup. Hmmm. I need to think of a way to make sure nothing can come loose and fly around. If I dented Deb's pickup I'd be in sooooo MUCH trouble. :o

I'll see about doing some sketches and MAYBE get this stupid HP sanner/printer to work. Maybe Deb will let me borrow her camera for a video.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Move her truck BEFORE you start setting this up, lest your enthusiasm carries you away as you complete the set-up. Happened to me in 1985 when I was hogging with a six inch grinder next to my bud's BELOVED Subaru wagon.  Those sparks are actually burning steel blobs. They "worked a treat" as a reverse enameling on his two side windows. QUITE Permanent.

Frosty, our relationship was never the same after that, just sayin...... MOVE THE TRUCK FIRST.

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Oh yeah, disk grinder dust  LOVES melting into glass and don't do paint any good either. Deb learned a similar lesson about the walk behind weed whacker, driveway gravel and the side widows on the old Bronco II.

I was talking about using the pickup to pull the cable. Otherwise Deb keeps her pickup parked by the house I ask permission to use it for shop stuff. She kept pushing for a small pickup when we were looking then she drove it now she loves it. I get the Saturn Vue but what the hey she lets me use her truck if I need it I just have to be careful with it.

For how often I MIGHT need to bend pipe I can afford some plywood and have the cable. Not saying I wouldn't want a hydraulic bender but . . . $?

Frosty The Lucky.

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Next time try calling around to a local process piping/ HVAC company and see if they've got pieces they would sell you. That's the line of work I'm in and the shop always has tons of pipe of different sizes and lengths and mild steel of random shapes/thickness sitting in the scrap bin. I've messed around with some 2 inch schedule 40 and its not hard to move at all once I got it hot. Doesn't take long for the paint to come off, it's only there to prevent rust in the first place.

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Hey Creo, 

My UDS has three air inputs (yeah, I know its overkill) each 120 degrees apart with black iron pipes and valves that run up to the top of the barrel.  They insure that the fireball stays uniform since the air is more or less coming in from all sides evenly.  I am going to upgrade the smoker to a temperature controlled fan system so I don't have any more sleepless nights readjusting the air inputs on long smokes.  The kit that I am going to buy only comes with one blower.  I could very easily just hook it up to one of the air intakes and block the other 2 but whats the fun in that?  To make use of my existing intakes I am trying to join them all together and then hook the fan to the joined unit.  

All of the pipe came in today so it is going to be pipe forging for the weekend. 

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