Jump to content
I Forge Iron

How hot does the outside of your forge get?


natenaaron

Recommended Posts

I just finished my second one.  It is running a 1 inch T burner and a 3/4 inch T burner.  It is 1/4 of an air compressor tank lined with 2 inches of ceramic wool, and a 1/2 inch or satanite.  After running with both burners for 15 minutes I sprayed water on the outside and the drops danced off.  The welds holding the burner supports on blued as well.  The picture is prior to the first lighting.  There are 620ish cubic inches inside the forge after accounting for liner.

How hot does the outside of your forge get?  Should I be worried?

forege 2.0.JPG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You may want to stuff some scrap kaowool around the burners in the holding tubes.  That may also affect the tuning of your burners as well.  My forge is smaller than that and the outside shell gets too hot to place a hand on it without injury, but has never gotten hot enough to burn the original paint off the cylinder.

You can turn a big burner down quite a bit, but you can only turn a small burner up so far. You gave 622 cubic inches as your volume I think.  That would put it beyond the capacity of a single 3/4" burner, but still within the range of two 3/4" burners.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Flame coming out the back opening is also wrapping around the curved end of the cylinder.

Yes, you have one too many 3/4" burners. Their orientation is also aimed at each other, not directly but they're still fighting.

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I fixed the aim issue.  They hit the center of their respective floor tiles.  When i put the Plastech 85p floor in place it broke and would not stick back together so the one floor is now 2 square tiles each. 

The back is curved but goes all the way to within 1/8 inch of the floor. I guess that could be the issue.  I will see tomorrow when I get the 1 inch burner replaced with a 3/4.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Current forge (#5) is Freon bottle with 2" kaowool with kiln wash, running with one Gensheimer burner.  The original paint is burned off around the mouth and around the pass-through tube, but the main body still has the lovely blue-green shade common to Freon bottles.  It's hot enough that I don't want to touch it after I've been forging for a while, but not so hot that I worry about it collapsing or warping the outer shell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good to know, I don't want mine running off with some young smith I'll leave it like it is.

The area around the opening is going to get really hot, hotter than header paint will take let alone stove paint. If it's important enough maybe enamel it?

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly I was worried about the welds coming apart and the burner coming out.  Welds are good but being new I was not sure if cracking was possible with them getting very very hot then cooling.  In the winter they will be cooling pretty rapidly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a chance unless you used something like hard facing wire and quenched the beads. My burners just sit o the lid on 14ga. "washer" shaped feet I made with hole saws, mig tacked to the thread protectors I use instead of flares. Parts of the frame get so hot it warps. The only thing that's broken in the 10 years I've been using it are the light insulating fire bricks I use for walls and partitions.

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...