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Kaowool and refractory


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Welcome aboard Tristan, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the iforge gang live within visiting distance.

Yes, about 1/2" or a hard refractory as  the flame face in a forge will preserve the Kaowool considerably. A good high alumina refractory will be unaffected by flux erosion as well.

We've been discussing exactly this in the "Forges 101" thread, it's well worth the read most of your questions have probably been answered already but we're always happy to talk.

Frosty The Lucky.

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I've had a measured-with-photos 1545 degC, 2813 degF from a forge.

The forge was a quick, dirty IFB construction made from some very cheap (probably Chinese) grade 23 bricks and a 1" burner based on an Amal atmospheric injector. I was experimenting with jet sizes and this was using a 0.6mm MIG tip (.024") with an actual ID between .029" and .031". A #69 drill would go but a #68 would not. Propane pressure would have been at maximum on a nominal 0-30 PSI regulator. No gauge.

The chamber was 6" x 6" x 13.5" with the opening only about 3" x 3" at the time. It was built with a 5"H, 3"W front opening  and a 3" x 3" rear opening and I'm pretty sure the rear opening was plugged with kaowool when the photo was taken. The front opening was reduced with a bit of JM23 IFB and the bottom pic shows how it melted. 

 

DSCF0006_zps51cf6b93.thumb.JPG.530406b4d0155f54bf1689a9c75d20c6.JPG

 

DSCF0005_zpsdaf77aa2.thumb.JPG.7376b0de441767ad1cf206f8cc5e8d7d.JPG

DSCF0011_zpsa1906ee3.thumb.JPG.f2b2a6922068734902658e868fa63fee.JPG

 

I have no doubt a forge temperature of 2900 degF is achievable, though I'd consider it unwise..

If the refractory hangs together at the temperature, the Kaowool behind it should survive ok. It doesn't actually melt until 3200 degF and only needs to retain enough strength and rigidity to keep the refractory in place. Always keep in mind that forge linings are consumable items.

http://www.barteltinsulation.com/pdfs/CERAMICBLANKET.pdf

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Effectively none. 

The thermocouple was a type S removed from a Landfill gas burner I decommissioned. Type S is generally considered stable and an uncalibrated type S is a lot more useful to me than no type S. 

The readout was the cheapest thing I could find which would take types K, N, R and S. I did check it against the "calibrator" at work, but even that does not have traceable calibration back to National standards.

To be fair, I don't get the impression many of us on IFI are working to ISO9001 or similar and most of us understand that there is an uncertainty in any measurement. 

For example, the chamber dimensions I gave above are based on nominal 9" x 4.5" x 3" IFBs and I'd expect most smiths to be ok with that.

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Welcome aboard Tristan, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the iforge gang live within visiting distance.

Yes, about 1/2" or a hard refractory as  the flame face in a forge will preserve the Kaowool considerably. A good high alumina refractory will be unaffected by flux erosion as well.

We've been discussing exactly this in the "Forges 101" thread, it's well worth the read most of your questions have probably been answered already but we're always happy to talk.

Frosty The Lucky.

How do I put my general location and how do I find the forges 101 thread

Are any of y'all from oklahoma

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Click on your avatar or name. Select "edit profile" from the menu at the upper right of the window that opens. make the changes you like and save.

This should link you to the latest page of the "forges 101" thread.  https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/47439-forges-101/?page=20&tab=comments#comment-559930

 

To search Iforge, forget the site search engine, it's not so good. Just include "Iforgeiron" in the search terms on your favorite search engine and it'll find what's here. I searched, "Forges 101 iforge" for the above link. 

See you there. :)

Frosty The Lucky.

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When people get "specific" I just have to ask about calibration.  I especially get twitchy when folks start throwing around PSI on their regulators as I know that the cheap gauges on cheap propane set ups are notorious about being off, especially after getting bounced around a bit.  They do make it easy to get to a reasonably close previous setting on that particular burner; but not very good comparing different burners.

ISO9001 certification was "interesting" as we were a section of Bell Labs producing the software that the 800 number system ran on.  We were one of the first software groups to be certified and the auditors had problems as they were used to hardware producing factories.  They were scratching their heads on how to judge software releases.  I was on the lab team then and they jumped like a chicken on a junebug on things they did understand---like calibration of lab equipment and test tools.

What I did learn is that ISO is NOT a quality system in my opinion.  It is concerned with things being reproducible not high quality:  If your documented customer complaint process was to send thugs with baseball bats to break the knees of the complainer; then ISO was perfectly happy if you could show documentation that all complainers were in wheelchairs due to knee injuries...(Now Deming and Shewhart would argue that having your process under control is the first step to improving the quality of it...)

(Malcom Baldrige was more concerned with if you had *good* process rather than just perfect adherence to a possible bad process.)

 

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