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I Forge Iron

Reviving a dead proforge.


Charles R. Stevens

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It's still here, believe me if we could send this weather elsewhere we would! Oh I don't know, complaining about the weather is sort of a human being thing. I'll bet we were complaining about, weather, bugs for dinner again, and other things before we invented language. Some things are as old as humanity. "Gronk, hold my bear leg and watch this."

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/21/2019 at 8:41 AM, Charles R. Stevens said:

When I asked the manufacturer about how to beef it up so it would service, I was told not to mount it in a truck...

Yup, that sounds about right for what the manufacture would say. That about as helpful as the old joke. Doctor, it hurts every time I raise my arm over my head, what do I do. Doctor: Stop raising your arm over your head. 

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  • 1 month later...

The new material is certainly a better choice for a farriers forge. As we generally work out of a trailer work truck and not a stationery shop the fragile material used before was vibration sensitive. 
as to cost, the cost I got mine at was very reasonable but I think the MSRP is over the top. Kiln shelf, rigidizer and kook wool (now that you can find it in small lots) would have cost 1/2 as much as I payed and a 1/4 what MSRP is. 
Cost and the raw ceramic wool used to seal the door and under the floor are always a concern so I did buy some.

I am very satisfied with the hard facing and kiln wash upgrade as well. 
 

being able to run the forge at 2.5 psi as opposed to 5 for general forging and 5 for welding (still a neutral flame) saves fuel and frustration. 
I need to order a bit of wool and build a single burner both to use up the rigidizer, hard facing and kiln wash. 
 

the pro forge has handled 2” rounds heating them over a foot, but frankly for most work it is overkill. A stack of 4 keg shoes is what it is optimized for and will go from cold to ready to shape in less time than it takes to trim the feet. 
 
but it will handle a Bowie or a largish scroll with equal aplomb 

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37 minutes ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

but it will handle a Bowie or a largish scroll with equal aplomb 

Never made knives, but I was getting ready to start a wrought iron business back in 99. Thats how all this came about for me; who knew?

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Is "99" a typo Mike? I thought we and Ron were monkeying with NA burners in the mid to late 80s. Deb and I've been married since 96 and my first successful T burner was a rusting prototype in the shed then. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Could be, we didn't actually talk to each other until Iforge. Until then we knew who the other was and then things went sour and I didn't hear anything from him till recently.

I only heard about his burners as burners but on a blacksmithing site, he wasn't talking blacksmithing just burners. We share the opinion that a burner is a burner, what you use it for is a matter of adjustment. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Not a typo, Frosty. I did mean back in nineteen nighty nine. You're right that we didn't cross paths until here on IFI; probably around 2010.

Charles, the closest I ever came to glass blowing was a college class in it, in my thirties. I did read some books on building heating equipment for glass blowing, when I was first looking into building my own gas forge. A lot of my early ideas on forge building was influenced by Giberson; just not his ideas about burners. Then I discovered the home casting Newsgroups. I had already been writing up Gas Burners for Forges, Furnaces, and Kilns for a year before I  started paying general attention to blacksmithing Newsgroups.

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