Jump to content
I Forge Iron

Burner flames


Andrew Golabek

Recommended Posts

Not bad, still a little rich. What type burner are they? I know you're messing with liquid fuel I'm wondering if they're naturally aspirated or gun (blown) burners.

How does it work in a forge? In the forge is a different world for the burners, important factors change.

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I believe Mikey explained why flames seem to disappear or change in color and length as the interior of the forge heats up in either his Burner 101 or Forges 101 thread.  I don't recall it well enough off the top of my head to offer the explanation.

Dragon's breath can be difficult to see in broad daylight especially looking straight into the heating chamber.   If you wait till nearly dark and take a picture from the side you'll probably see something different.

I just use scraps of my insulating blanket around the burner (outside the forge of course) once I have it aimed the way I want it to seal it off.  I hit it with a little bit of rigidizer (fumed silica in water) when packing it in and let it air dry for a while before firing, but you probably don't even really have to wait.

BTW, you're braver than I am.  The thought of vaporizing the liquid fuel to make a naturally aspirated burner makes me a little nervous.  It's probably because I have a limited understanding of what's going on there, but I am impressed with the functionality of your design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, Buzzkill said:

BTW, you're braver than I am.  The thought of vaporizing the liquid fuel to make a naturally aspirated burner makes me a little nervous.  It's probably because I have a limited understanding of what's going on there, but I am impressed with the functionality of your design.

You and me both Brother! People don't usually realize how dangerous fuel oils are. Guys on the loading docks take classes in how to safely fill a tank truck and it's not read a paragraph and have an old hand show you which valve to turn. Fuel oils have the terrifying trait of having an atmospheric saturation point smack in the center of it's flammable ratio. Meaning ANY air in a fuel oil tank will burn explosively, full or empty, ANY AIR. 

The reason your flame seems to disappear is because the furnace liner is glowing more brightly and the flame is pretty well balanced. This is the only blue flame NA oil burner I've seen. I sure hope you aren't running it anywhere near things you value.

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ahhh, still crazy dangerous but not nearly so much as fuel oil. It takes a LOT of process to get fuel oil burners to work properly in a boiler and it'd take a serious bump up to get a NA oil burner to work.

Gasoline should be doable with a automotive fuel pump. Safer but I'm still not encouraging it. Can I interest you in a more sensible burner design?

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually kerosene, and then gasoline burners have been around for over a century, and both the original hand burners and the new oxy-gasoline torches are available today. The classic pump-up gasoline hand torch makes a single flame envelope of neutral blue, which is nevertheless rated by so-called experts as burning at a lower temperature than propane; I do not believe their conclusions.

What made the old style gasoline burners dangerous were their leather seals. I don't think Andrew's burner design is anywhere near that dangerous. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the reputation of being weak on heat has come from the various people who have tried them to heat home casting furnaces; the problem is that their rather perfect flames have been coming out of brass flame nozzles, which must be kept at a small distance from the equipment openings, to keep such nozzles from melting. When a flame enters that way it induces massive amounts of unneeded secondary air; I believe this is where the underwhelming view of their heating potential springs from.

Anyone can see videos of some of the refurbished old-fashioned models running on the web; one look at their flames, and you now weak flames ain't their problem. The new burners have steel flame nozzles; end of problem.

That should read "know"...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still have an old gasoline blow torch in the Connex. It's easy to tell if the leather seals are bad it won't hold pressure. Take it apart, pull the retainer screw and cut a couple more. They were designed for easy maintenance and repair. The nozzle on mine is cast iron and even at full blast or heck any blast in a Kaowool burner port didn't get hot. Neither did the forge.

Even using the fuel adjustment screw to lean it out as much as possible it wouldn't make more than dull red in the forge and the flame was always very reducing. These things were designed for plumbing and soldering. Mine won't melt Al in an insulated chamber. Oh I have the lead melter and a number of long handled dipper things for pouring lead it went with.

This set of tools dates from the days when the profession and name still matched. Plumbum is Latin for lead and a plumber worked with lead plumbing. It was still being used and installed till what the 60s? It's a lead pipe cinch it's all been replace long ago eh? Oh wait did the local gvt. find something more important to spend that money on? If you've seen the news in the last what 6 months you'll be aware there are still Cities and Counties in AMERICA!!! that still have lead mains and piping up to the house which have to meet code. Unfortunately gvts. get to decide if the law applies to them. Sorry if that was too political for the site Glenn but some things just TICK ME OFF too much to be quiet.

Frosty The Lucky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's true that professionals who knew what they were doing, safely handled these torches when they were new. However, I believe their present reputation stems from ignorant newbies trying to refurbish ancient piles of junk into serviceable tools, sans experience. There are videos on the web showing perfect flames coming from some of them, besides others that are barely running. I find this to be the same kind of challenge newbies with any other kind of burner face.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't encourage anybody to try making the things work again, they're pretty simple but a simple mistake can be pretty catastrophic. You wouldn't want to be holding a burning quart can of pressurized gasoline and discover there was a dried out leather gasket on the valve you didn't notice. Nothing like having burning gasoline or diesel spraying on you to take the fun and romance out of restoring old tools eh?

I don't know about others but the one I have operates just like a Coleman stove, you pump it up and light it. It doesn't start burning properly till it warms up. Then it's pressurizing itself and can run away if it's not in proper working condition. I only ever lit mine once and it's been buried in the Connex ever since.

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...