Forge Meltdown! Help!

[Colton McCormick]

Hi, My name is Colton and I am new to the site. Thank you so much for any advice or help that is given. 

So! I am currently on my second forge build. I have been forging with a little rinky dink burner hard brick forge and decided its time to move up. This is the first time I have made a forge with ceramic wool. I did a lot of research and went slowly to get everything right. I thought I had a finished build but apparently from the pictures that's wrong.

Here are my specs. Roughly 2 inches of inswool from the hardware store,a decent coat of Kastolite 30, stainless shell, and a ribbon burner modeled after Wayne's site. After a couple test firings and letting it cure for a week, I ran her hard today and I easily hit bright yellow temps on my steel in minutes. I'm forging having a good time and everything is going great till I bump the forge and this giant hole of what used to be inswool that has been melted appears. oooooooof.

So, I'm in a pretty good chunk of change on wool and kastolite right now. So my questions are, What went wrong? and can I salvage my kastolite shell and re wrap it with wool? Or do I need to rip it all out and start from scratch?  Thank you all so much and sorry if I put this in the wrong section.

[Latticino]

Ceramic blanket insulation comes in a variety of flavors.  I've never seen the correct 2600 deg F rated material offered at a hardware store.  I expect you purchased material that was rated  for lower top temperatures.  You probably could do with a thicker lining of Kastolite (which would help reduce the heat the blanket sees, but if you can handle it carefully enough reuse of the Kastolite should be possible.  I would look for 6 or 8 pound density blanket material rated for at least 2600 deg. F

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Wow, never have I seen that. You wouldn't think a Ribbon burner would concentrate the flame to do that. My thinking is the hardware store inswool isn't a high enough temperature rating like Latticino said. You can get the correct blanket material here from Glenn in the Gas Forge Supplies up in the blue banner. Another good thread is the Read This First also in the banner. Don't know if you have seen it yet but it's full of tips for getting the best out of IFI.

BTW: Welcome aboard, if you edit your profile to show your general location, you may be surprised how many members are near enough to lend a hand. If you were near me I have 2600 degree Kaowool that I could let you have enough to patch it up.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many members live within visiting distance.

Your burner got hot enough to melt the blanket. Don't buy ceramic wool refractory at a hardware store. Look in the phone book for a HVAC supply company. You're looking for 1" 8lb refractory blanket. If they don't carry it they will know who does. 

Also as Latticino says, IF you can remove the kastolite in one piece then yes you can wrap it and reinsert it. This is very similar to how I made my first double liner forge, I cast the hard refractory between sono tubes to make a 3/4" thick x 6" ID refractory tube wrapped it in Kaowool and inserted it in the shell. I had to compress the kaowool with newspaper and tape to get it to slip in the shell. The paper burned out eventually. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Colton McCormick]

Awesome. Thank you all so much!