5 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

County/Country I don't see where you have edited your profile to show either!   We strongly suggest you put in a general location; sure helps with MANY smithing questions and allows for the odd "I'm in the same area, stop by some day"s 

Now as was mentioned If you are using loose firebricks as part of a forge you really need a set of hot firebrick tongs!  I adapted mine from one of the crudest and ugliest set of home made pulloffs (wouldn't work as nippers even though there is high carbon steel forge welded to the ends)  Anyway I think I have  US$1 in buying them and a couple of heats for each side reforging them and they work a treat for moving hot firebrick.  I'll try to get a picture of them next time I'm collocated so folks can make gorgeous versions of their own and taunt me with them here.

Sorry Thomas, My profile showed my location but it didn't show on my profile name, it has been amended.

I won't be using fire brick in my forge, but thank you for the idea/tip!

23 hours ago, Square Nail said:

Sorry Thomas, My profile showed my location but it didn't show on my profile name, it has been amended.

I won't be using fire brick in my forge, but thank you for the idea/tip!

Well okay then. We'll call off the thugs sent to straighten you out. 

Frosty The Lucky.

4 hours ago, Frosty said:

Well okay then. We'll call off the thugs sent to straighten you out. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks for calling them off, I was starting to look over my shoulder!

Awesome work I too am trying to build a forge, a forge pretty much like yours it's in the "insulate or not to insulate " topic but it's cut down now. Anyways about yours I love it I wish I had done exactly what you did I like the space you have. And I'm not sure on a door, but your design looks like it will work really well. 

10 hours ago, Welder74 said:

Awesome work I too am trying to build a forge, a forge pretty much like yours it's in the "insulate or not to insulate " topic but it's cut down now. Anyways about yours I love it I wish I had done exactly what you did I like the space you have. And I'm not sure on a door, but your design looks like it will work really well. 

Thank you Sir!

On 5/24/2017 at 9:54 PM, Square Nail said:

I will have to give that a try! There is a HVAC Service company just an hour away! Thanks for the tip!

Contacted 3 different local HVAC companies and none of them had any pieces they would give away or even sell. Did find one that would order a role for $635.However I did find a supplier called High Temp in Portland that carries everything. Will call them Tuesday .

Are they suppliers or service companies? A supplier can't sell a partial roll so they sell the whole thing or not at all. The service company can't use rems by code they have to cut it off the roll. That leaves them with all the trimmings to dispose of.

Try a service comapany or as Thomas suggested a Pellet or wood stove service company. 

Frosty The Lucky.

On 5/28/2017 at 10:25 PM, Frosty said:

Are they suppliers or service companies? A supplier can't sell a partial roll so they sell the whole thing or not at all. The service company can't use rems by code they have to cut it off the roll. That leaves them with all the trimmings to dispose of.

Try a service comapany or as Thomas suggested a Pellet or wood stove service company. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Yes these were Service companies and the local wood stove outfit didn't have any 8 LB. The one company that had about a half of a roll they would part with wanted over $300 for the piece, I said thanks but no thanks. I will probablyvjust put everything on hold until I head to Portland in about three weeks and pick some up then. 

That's crazy, I'd have to remember that next time I needed some furnace work. Distribution International has an outlet in Portland and Eugene. I'd call before dropping by they may not operate like the one here but they carry just about every darned refractory known.

You might be better off ordering what you need from Wayne Coe, he's darned reasonable for small quantities.

Frosty The Lucky.

I get it for 75$ a box from this place. They are in St. Louis Mo. I dont know what shipping would be.

http://hitempincusa.com/index.asp

 

12 hours ago, Frosty said:

That's crazy, I'd have to remember that next time I needed some furnace work. Distribution International has an outlet in Portland and Eugene. I'd call before dropping by they may not operate like the one here but they carry just about every darned refractory known.

You might be better off ordering what you need from Wayne Coe, he's darned reasonable for small quantities.

Frosty The Lucky.

I do believe I will send Mr Coe a note and tell him what and how much I need and see how bad the shipping is on this stuff. You are correct Frosty about the next time I need furnace work done!

7 hours ago, crappiew said:

I get it for 75$ a box from this place. They are in St. Louis Mo. I dont know what shipping would be.

Thanks for the lead crappiew! Actually Distribution International and Hi Temp have outlets in Portland. If Mr Coe doesn't pan out i will make the trip to check them out. I may just bite the bullet and buy enough for a couple forges and have enough to repair this one or make another!

 

That's what I do. I like having enough material on hand for experimentation purposes. I have already built a couple nice forges and give some too a buddy. And still I have enough to do a couple more. I'm in the process of building a nice little 2 burner forge.

Hooray, after some help and suggestions yesterday from Mr. Coe, I just sent an order for all supplies needed for my forge from Wayne Coe, and for considerably less than what it would have cost me to travel to get it! Thanks Wayne!

Just received all my supplies to finish the forge! Now just find the time to finish. Summer family time is seriously cutting into my free time!

I've bought from this place before and gotten good service.

http://www.hightemptools.com/index.html

 

Finally have had a chance to work on the forge again! the following pics will show some of my successes and failures. 

This one is the initial firing of the "Frosty Burners"

 

This is after trimming the tip a 1/16th on the first burner

 

I decided to finish lining the Forge. Two 1" layers of Kaowool with a heavy 1/2" of Kast-O-Lite then a final coat of Metrikote. I used a collodial silica rigidizer on the wool before the kastolite. Let dry a little and then fired the forge to dry the rigidizer and after applying the Kastolite let sit over night before applying the metrikote. Now will let it sit for a few days to cure and get rid of any residual mosture before firing again!

 

This looks like only 3 sides of kastolite but I did finish the top also. I did 1 side at a time, rolled the forge 90 degrees after it set did the same for both sides, let dry over night and turned it over to do the top the next morning! 1 1/2" ABS pipe worked well as a form around the burner openings! 

 

And the finished product.

From what little the burners have been running it seems that the fairly good flame is going away with the more the interior space is cut down. I also had been using Larry Zoeller flares in the original test burn but found some of the thread protectors that Frosty mentioned in his "T burner" instructions so I changed the burners to those. When I did the drying burn for the rigidizer there was a small amount of Dragon breath and orange flame. Regretfully I did not get a pic of that but will document the rest of the tuning. 

On 5/30/2017 at 9:30 PM, Square Nail said:

Are they suppliers or service companies? A supplier can't sell a partial roll so they sell the whole thing or not at all. The service company can't use rems by code they have to cut it off the roll. That leaves them with all the trimmings to dispose of.

Try a service comapany or as Thomas suggested a Pellet or wood stove service company. 

Frosty The Lucky.

This is the problem with every bit of well meant advise about suppliers; we can only go buy what we run into in our own areas. We can't do anything to prepare people for the malice, lazyness, and greed they must deal with in their local merchants; they have to roll the dice and take their chances.

Maybe we could we could make a subsection on this forum with local suppliers per region? not all areas will have a club, not every one will be in a club if there is one. I was thinking about that. Only risk is it getting outdated.  

The United States is large, 50 states, and many of them will have multiple regions, plus this is a worldwide forum so a "region" list might end up with a thousand or more entries that need to be maintained or else become outdated and useless.  Why I often suggest types of places and let the hunter do the hunting in their location. In the Netherlands I would suggest talking to people who repair home heating boilers and provide refractories for ceramic kilns.

(for example I live in the USA state of New Mexico  that is 315194 square kilometers whereas the Netherlands is 41543 sq km...)

2 hours ago, Mikey98118 said:

This is the problem with every bit of well meant advise about suppliers; we can only go buy what we run into in our own areas. We can't do anything to prepare people for the malice, lazyness, and greed they must deal with in their local merchants; they have to roll the dice and take their chances.

Or you can do like many have suggested on this site and just go with a reputable supplier from this forum. Having no viable source for material any where close, this became my only real option. Larry Zoeller sent flares and a pressure gauge as requested for a very reasonable price, Wayne Coe was very helpful, prompt and courteous with his shipment. All my supplies from him were packaged and labelled and again very reasonable. I would recommend either of these men for supplies if you find yourself in the same situation as I did.

Not only do they take the guess work out of ordering but their experience is something to not ignore. 

I thank all the suggestions from everyone, and I for one will pay a bunch more attention to the experienced folks on here and not try to second guess myself!

Yes; there are problems we can help with, and others we can't. I had to deal with angry readers who were told "there is no such thing" as a 14T Tweeco MIG contact tip, by welding supply store clerks who simply didn't want their business. A google search will show this to be one of the most common tips out there. The problem was that people expected to walk into one of those stores and buy a single $1.50 (at the time) tip, like they were ordering a hamburger at a MacDonald; not so much.

The thing is that being a parts supplier is a lot of responsibility; it isn't easy to talk someone into doing that gig.

 

That's actually kind of funny, given the trouble I had finding most supplies, our local welding shop sells individual tips for a buck each! Go Figure!

Thomas, i am aware of the difference in scale, thank you. I acknowledge that it will be about impossible to list all the local suppliers for each region. But the "where do I get this stuff" question comes up quite often so I thought a listing of sine sort would make sense. Starting out I struggled with finding parts but I have a pretty decent list of suppliers, both stores and online now. I will probably share this somewhere for the benefit of others. 

Well the correct answer to such questions is usually: "Ask your local smiths where they get such stuff"

I can agree on that. Though even the non local ones can be super helpful:)