Burners 101

[Mikey98118]

The more good designs the merrier. Once the burner provides a really hot flame, personal choice is usually based on conveinience; and that is whatever each individual decides it is.

[Bearded Welder]

Too funny Frosty! 

I have actually followed all those differant designs in this thread and it's all very interesting to me. I think it made a differance in my burner but positive in some ways and negative in others.. maybe made the burner slightly unstable do to mixing speed possibly? I might try and lengthen the tube to see if that settles it back down, I know I have a good base model to go from, but I can't help trying to always make it better... I'm sure nobody here ever feels like that..ha! 

Thanks! I might just add visual design into my criteria from now on 

So then my crappy hard fire brick might work a treat then, the wife will be glad to see me get some use out of them after she found out the money I spent on... Well... Basically fancy rocks because I found out later, unless you want to forge a pizza, they are basically useless..

True words Mikey.. Not everyone has that welding fan belt for instance..

Cheers!

Phil the Bearded

[Mikey98118]

20 hours ago, Bearded Welder said:

maybe made the burner slightly unstable do to mixing speed possibly?

It might seam that way...but, what is actually going on is that, the harder the flame is tuned the narrower its peak range of adjustment will become. In other words, your car ain't sick; its a dragster. Family vehicles have a lot wider latitude of use, but will be a giggle on the track  

[Shawn1924]

Finally put gas through my burner build just wanted to post a picture and say thank for the help and time you guys invest into the forums 

[Frosty]

DANG Mike! Didn't I just say I haven't seen a burner with a reducer between the T ad mixing tube work well?  Well, there you go. Maybe I charmed the build! 

Looking pretty good Shawn. How do they work in the forge?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Bearded Welder]

Mikey 

A great analogy if I ever heard one! Thanks for the tip! 

Cheers! 

Phil the Bearded

 

[Cris J]

Howdy all,

I’ve been reading these threads for a bit now to soak in what I can, but I decided not saying anything Is  hampering my learning ability.

I have recently taken up interest in blacksmithing and decided to tackle my own forge build rather than buying one (hoping I’d save a little money). I dove right in to cutting up my forge and painting it with heat resistant paint, planning out where I’d get all the stuffing, so to speak, for the forge (Insawool, Rigidizer, ITC-100 all that). I realized I should also plan out burner placement a bit later than ideal and just opened up a can of worms. I had no idea there were so many that could possibly be used. After binge reading some of the posts from over the years I realized I could use help with all things burners as I know very little. 

Rounding up a smidge my overall volume inside the air tank is 780 cu/in. I know it will shrink once the insawool and flooring is inside. I’m lost on how to calculate the space I’ll lose, then subsequently find out how many burners I will need, which of the infinite types there are to use that I need, then where to place them. 

My soon to be gas forge is round so I planned to put them 15° off from directly above the floor for even heating throughout. At first blush I thought I may need two burners, given the volume. The height of my forge is 15.5” so if two are necessary 5.16” apart was my current plan. 

Please pick it apart and tell me where I can be better, what can be trashed or improved. If you guys need pictures of what I cut up and measurements for anything as well I’m happy to oblige.

Thank you all for any help or advice,

Cris

 

 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Cris, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you'll find out how many members live within visiting distance. Networking with other smiths is the best and fastest way to learn the craft, for instance it MIGHT be nice to try out a couple gas forges before you build one?

You painted the forge shell BEFORE you built it? Can you think of any potential problems?

If you have't already bought it forget the ITC-100 it isn't made to use in gas forges and there are much better products that are.

I don't figure out other people's proposed forge volume anymore, I got too much grief for my trouble and it's good basic math everybody should know.  A cylinder's volume in cubic inches is, area of the INSIDE of the liner, NOT THE SHELL, times length, minus any liner in the ends. 

Pi.r square. So, you subtract the thickness of each layer of forge liner from the RADIUS of the cylinder and figure the area.

As an example you have a 12" dia tank. The radius is 6" minus 2 layers of 1" ceramic blanket and 1/2" of hard refractory. We don't worry about how thick the kiln wash is it's typically about like a coat of latex paint. Back to numbers. 6" minus 2 1/2" = 3 1/2" x pi squared. Multiply that number by the length of the chamber and you have the chamber's volume.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Cris J]

Northern Idaho - not a potato farmer

if anyone is close let me know I’d love to try my hand at anything I can if you’ll let me. I just don’t know anyone that has a set up for a forge around here so I’ve only been able to learn online or reading it in books. 

I realized that painting it before I welded was a bone head mistake. If you can’t tell I’m fairly new at fabrication, actually I’m new to everything. Jumped the gun a bit. 

i haven’t bought the ITC-100 so I’m definitely open to suggestions on anything better to use. 

thank you for the example on finding the chamber volume after everything goes in. I’ll throw my numbers into a calculator after I get off work in the next few hours. Much appreciated. 

Would it help if I put the volume of the chamber on here after I find it out for help with the burners? 

[Frosty]

Don't sweat not knowing stuff, nobody is born knowing anything. Asking questions and looking into the answers, maybe trying them out is how you fast track learning. Most of us have made more than enough mistakes to go around and we offer them for folk to learn from. This lets you invent NEW mistakes so we get some of our own back. 

I don't know off the top of my head but there ABANA affiliates not terribly far from you. With your general location in the header anybody reading a post from you will have the info in their face so folk close can shoot you a PM or just say HEY! 

Yeah, Plistex 900 or Matrikote are both better kiln washes in  propane forges. 

Volume and shape determine how large and how many burners you'll need depending on what kind of temperature gradient you want in your forge. Some folk like having a HOT spot, others need even temperature throughout the forge. Depends on what you do, skill levels, etc. 

Don't get in a hurry, the only thing rushing guarantees is making mistakes permanent more quickly. 

Welcome to the learning curve, it's a life long ride but it's FUN!

Frosty The Lucky.

[G-son]

Welcome here! But I want to point out there are other areas & threads on the forum about the construction of forges, with LOADS of informations about materials etc. While I'm sure lots of people are fine answering such questions here in the burners 101 thread too, I suggest going to the more suitable places first.

This thread contains loads of priceless info about building and tuning burners, but it is 82 pages long, with 25 posts on each page - that totals over 2000 posts. It's already close to impossible to find the nugget of information you are looking for without spending several days reading it all from start to finish (which I have done a couple of times already, and need to do again), so keeping the unrelated stuff out of here would keep this thread slightly easier to use. 

[Cris J]

Northern Idaho - not a potato farmer

The learning curve is certainly half the fun. Besides if I can’t laugh at my own dumb mistakes I shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at other’s. 

My interest in blacksmithing revolves around mainly blade smithing and house hold stuff like tools and the like. So would a hotspot be better for that type of work? 

Im just about off work so I’ll get those numbers up here for the volume as soon as I can. During my reading and a slight guess I’d think I’d need maybe two 3/4” burners, but I’ll lean on all your expertise.

Is kiln wash the same as hard refractory over the insawool or is that the Rigidizer? I thought itc-100 was the hard refractory. 

 

Sorry G-son, you got it. 

[Frosty]

You have a good point G-son, we do clutter the sections with off subject chatter and should probably show more restraint. I think you're making the mistake of thinking of burners and forges as two different things, though. They aren't, they are two components of ONE thing a machine that does our bidding. It's hard to talk about one without discussing the other. 

Cris: You don't have to start every post with your general location, once in the header is plenty. You can tell folk you're not a potato farmer under your name where I tell folk I'm an Improbable curmudgeon though I change it now and then, depends on my mood.

We all laugh at each other's mistakes, especially the real head slappers. You know it's family if folk rib you regularly. 

I can't tell you what you'll like in a forge, it's a matter of personal preference, you wouldn't ask me what you should have on your hotcakes would you? I only brought up the shape of heat in the forge to point out another variable. 

ITC-100 is a kiln wash, in pottery kilns and some furnaces depending on the purpose ITC 100 keeps things from sticking to the furnace. Glazes from pottery for example. A propane forge benefits from a final layer between the flame and the liner it helps protect from mechanical erosion from scrapes and pokes and prevents forge welding fluxes from dissolving more vulnerable refractories. Starting from the shell moving inward. First the rigidized ceramic wool refractory as the insulator to help keep heat IN the forge. rigidizing is a material that encapsulates the ceramic fibers in blanket preventing them from drifting into your breathing air while making the blanket more rigid and stronger.

The hard refractory is a relatively thin layer of concrete hard armor to keep the blanket from being torn to bits by iron poking and snagging it and propane burner temperatures which typically exceed affordable blanket refractories. 

The kiln wash is painted to the inside of the hard refractory as a last layer of armor. 

Make sense?

These bits should give you a few subjects to search out and read about in the forges and burners 101 sections. Do you know how to skim so you don't have to read every darned post?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

In a perfect world, there would be no crossover between Burners 101 and Forges 101; that is hard enough to do in a text book, and a pipe dream on a web site.

Let us carry on as best we can

[Cris J]

Yeah I’ve been skimming over the last few days, and I agree I’ve found it hard to find a post where burners and forges themselves aren’t talked about at the same time but I’ll try to keep it to the point for burners. Everything makes sense though. 

Thank for the tips on the layers for the inside, I’ve found two new things I’ll need. Some more reading led to other parts I’m gonna go over as well for the stuffing of the chamber

Id like to make sure my math is right on if that’s okay? My día. Is 8” making radius 4” minus the 2” insawool and 1/2” of hard refractory puts it at 1 1/2”. 1 1/2 • pie squared gives me 14.8. That multiplied by my height 15 1/2” gives me 230 rounding up. So that would be 1 burner, probably 1/2”?

 

[Frosty]

I get 107 cu/in. Square the radius first, 1.5 x 1.5 x pi. 

My advice is find something else to use as a forge shell, a chamber 3" x 15 is a really oddball shape. Long and narrow is rarely of much if any use. Tiny burners are much harder to make, tolerances can be expressed as a % of it's size so the smaller the burner the smaller the tolerances which increases difficulty exponentially. 

Something 10 - 12" in diameter adjusted for length to make between 300-350 cu'in is a good proportion and one, 3/4" burner is so much easier to make. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Cris J]

Awesome thanks Frosty. Fortunately I have a much longer one I can chop up and WELD BEFORE I paint. I‘ll keep working over all the other posts before the get the innards and all that as well. 

Thank you all massively for helping me not  waste any more money on this and for being so kind. I’ll catch you all in the forums later. Much appreciated. 

P.S. Any thought on what I should use the small shell for now? 

[Frosty]

You mean you have a much LARGER one, not LONGER don't you? 

Just because you have something doesn't mean you HAVE TO use it. If that were true I'd have nothing in the yard but FINISHED projects!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shawn1924]

On 4/8/2020 at 10:22 PM, Frosty said:

DANG Mike! Didn't I just say I haven't seen a burner with a reducer between the T ad mixing tube work well?  Well, there you go. Maybe I charmed the build! 

Looking pretty good Shawn. How do they work in the forge?

Frosty The Lucky.

I built the burners first now working on insulating the forge body will give some more feed back on the forge as a whole when it’s operational. The reducer was more of a happy accident that anything else haha 

[Shawn1924]

On 4/8/2020 at 10:22 PM, Frosty said:

DANG Mike! Didn't I just say I haven't seen a burner with a reducer between the T ad mixing tube work well?  Well, there you go. Maybe I charmed the build! 

Looking pretty good Shawn. How do they work in the forge?

Frosty The Lucky.

I built the burners first now working on insulating the forge body will give some more feed back on the forge as a whole when it’s operational. The reducer was more of a happy accident that anything else haha 

[Frosty]

Accident or not my hat's off to you for making it work. Now to see how they work in the forge.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Cris J]

Yes I did mean larger sorry, and maybe a stated it too loosely. I should’ve said its the only other shell material I have 

After using your diagram Frosty I’ve got the burner working, I just had a question on tuning it for the appropriate cone look. Thank you by the way for putting that up it was very easy to follow 

ive been removing an 1/8” of an inch on the mig tip as your guidelines state for tuning, I’m able to keep it steady around 4-6 psi now. Is this what the cone should look like? 

[Bearded Welder]

I don't know if this is acceptable for me to critique as A, I'm pretty new and B, this is Frosty's burner, but I would like to take a crack at it. Forgive me if it's not. Looking at your flame.. If I had to guess I would say it's a little oxidizing, I see purple on the fringes and white in the center, ideally you want no white and a deep blue hue..now I could be seeing it completely different in the picture compared to what your seeing in person because of what the camera does.

Also it's hard for me to tell but it sort of looks like your ratios on your T are off..? I think Frosty's design for a 3/4inch burner has 1 inch air openings... Again it's hard to tell but it looks like your openings are bigger than 1 inch or your burner tube is smaller than 3/4inch..again I could be wrong. 

Since I'm new I would definitely wait for the greater knowledge of the others here, especially Frosty since it's his Design. 

Again forgive me if I shouldn't have added my 2 cents. 

Cheers! 

Phil The Bearded 

[Mikey98118]

A little oxidizing? No; it is more than a little reducing.

[Bearded Welder]

19 minutes ago, Mikey98118 said:

A little oxidizing? No; it is more than a little reducing.

So oxidizing means too much oxygen, which I took to mean reducing? Do I have the terminology mixed up? On that track rich would be propane rich I assume.. 

I looked at the picture in better detail and now see a tiny bit of green between the primary envolope and the "tertiary" envolope, is that what tells you it's reducing which I'm now understanding means reduced oxygen and more propane...? 

Sorry to hyjack your post Cris J, I shouldn't have commented about your pictures until I have a better understanding of what I'm looking at, my apologies..

Phil the Bearded