Atlas Graham Forge

[lanternnate]

Hi All. A new guy here. I've been lurking for a while, but I've never had much of value I could contribute. I just started doing some forging this summer as a hobby (or as my wife calls it therapy). I started out with a Whitlox wood fired forge because I didn't want to invest too much not knowing how much I would get into this or not. I was pretty immediately hooked and wanting more though. There's nothing wrong with the Whitlox, it's a great little forge and I kept it, but I quickly found myself drooling over the gas forges some of you had and what seemed like it would be a lot less fussing over a fire and more hammering steel. I spent a good amount of time reading posts from you guys building your own trying to determine if I could pull that off. I have two young children and a primary gig that can be demanding of my time, so I don't have a lot of excess time for my hobby. I ended up deciding I'd rather spend my time forging than building a forge, so I went searching for something to buy based on things I'd seen in how people were building theirs. I ended up finding the prototype "Graham Forge" from Atlas Knife Company. I don't have much experience to go by, but I'm really happy with it. I got to use it for the first time this weekend and wow what a difference from the wood fired! So much quicker to get started, more consistent heat, quicker back to temp between hammering, and MUCH easier to cleanup  As far as the specific forge goes it seems really solid, but light enough that I can carry it easily with the attached handle. The setup is easy because even I didn't mess it up. It appears to me it has a good temperature range from turning down low for heat treating, to mid for forging, and cranked it's supposed to be able to forge weld. I'd really like to try a forge weld with it, but I need some more confidence in myself first. I wanted to post this in case there is anyone else lurking who is in the spot I was in and looking for a good beginner gas forge to take that step but without the skill/time to build their own. I took some video of it because I know when I was looking at pictures on websites of forges it was really hard to get a feel for actual sizes and layout: 

Thanks all, back to lurking and learning!

[Mikey98118]

All I can see from the video is that it is quiet. The indications of how well and/or fast it heats up are conflicting.

[C-1ToolSteel]

Nice quench bucket in the background!

[ThomasPowers]

C-1, are you volunteering to pick up the pieces that get dropped in that tank in January?

[Judson Yaggy]

If they get dropped in that in Jan, they might just bounce then lay there hissing till you pick them up or the little puddle they melt freezes back over.  

[C-1ToolSteel]

If I can keep them, I would love to! My birthday is in January...

[lanternnate]

Ha, some days I'd like to use that as a quench tank! I do all the cleaning, the kids do all the swimming... I live in Vermont, so it's probably already pretty chilly. High temps right now are low 30s. Sorry the video doesn't show the heating capability well. I found out about the forge on another knife making forum. The folks there were mostly concerned with how low it could go. As far I can tell most of them do stock removal and only use their forges for heat treating. In the video I only have regulator open enough that it stopped chirping. It will turn up a lot more than this. I haven't actually opened the regulator full yet. Unfortunately my regulator doesn't have a pressure gauge, so I can't tell you the exact PSI. If anyone wants to see it running with the regulator open more let me know and I'll take another video. I realize this community is more likely concerned with forging temp not just heat treat.

[Frosty]

You need to change how you light that thing. One of these days propane is going to run down out of it before it lights and you're going to have a new hairdo. Just a 1/4 turn ball valve up near the burner is as fancy as it needs be. It's also a huge safety issue needing to reach UNDER the forge if a it starts burning back.

Frosty The Lucky.

[lanternnate]

Thanks Frosty. I know I've still got a lot to learn about using a gas forge, but that bit of advice falls in the learn sooner rather than later column for sure!

[Frosty]

I'll stop having things to learn shortly after I reach room temperature, blacksmithing is a life long learning curve if a person lived forever. I have my fingers crossed.

After all the times I've told guys to make the openings smaller I think those are too small. I don't think you could've gotten the tongs in the door and grabbed the spike head. On the other hand it might be good inspiration to make RR spike tongs.

How fast does it heat when turned up?

Frosty The Lucky.

[lanternnate]

The front plate is removable, and the front wall is soft fire brick. I think enlarging the opening wouldn't be too hard. I'll probably leave as is for now until I hit stock large enough to require modification. The inner chamber is a 5" diameter round chamber, so I would think you have the option of up to a 4" opening if you want to cut into it. My assumption is the smaller opening is better heat retention? The spike head fit fine when forging, but I was grabbing from the other end. The head got hammered into a "tomahawk" blade. I like the idea of an excuse for new tongs. Right now I have a "thick stuff" pair and a "thin stuff" pair and that's it.

I didn't time heat from cold to temp, but when forging the time in the forge between too cold to keep hammering and hot enough to hammer again was 30-60 seconds. That's based on where I eventually set the regulator which I can't guarantee was correct. I was just trying to judge by having it get hot but not having too much flame coming out the front and back.

[lanternnate]

First, a HUGE thank you to Frosty. Based on your wise words of warning I rearranged the forge and propane tank so the tank was to the side and away from the forge rather than under it. Today when I went to start it, sure enough gas rolled its way back out the tube and when it lit it was flaming out the hose end. That wouldn't have been so cool if I was still crouching under it. I also twice had a big gust of wind blow in and cause the flame to push back up and out the wrong side of the burner. Being able to calmly shut the gas off from well off to the side was far better than my previous potential alternative.

I took another video of startup heating. This time I set it where I have been setting it for forging rather than down at the lowest setting, and stuck cold metal in the cold forge to see how long it took to get to temp. Based on this I'd say this forge has a 5 minute "preheat" time. The temperature was in the 20s today, and as I said before there was some wind that caused some odd forge behavior. I may need to rig up some kind of wind screen. I was leaving the back tip of steel outside the forge for easy grabbing, so that's why the temp isn't even through the piece. Sorry iMovie decided to put the words over the entire clip rather than just a few seconds. I think you can still see the steel color ok though: