February 25, 20215 yr I think that would be a good idea. There are likely somme people just waiting to try making your burner.
February 25, 20215 yr i didnt know vinegar would remove zink. the conventional way is muriatic acid. and even then, if you have a part submerged in a sufficiantly large quantity of lets say 20% muriatic it will take a couple of hours, at least at room temperature.
February 25, 20215 yr Vinegar is an Acid. There are different concentrations, but the factor is Patience!! Hurry Up and Wait!! It is best to 'NOT USE' any Galvanized anything. The Zinc half life is over 10 years. It is not worth the playtime!! Neil
February 25, 20215 yr Mr. Swfdl, wrote, "The Zinc half life is over 10 years." Do you mean zinc the element (metal)? Probably not as zinc is not radioactive. Do you mean the zinc coating? That is galvanized iron, (or steel), and its deterioration due to weathering. That would be variable, due to chemical conditions. Or are you alluding to the time that inhaled zinc vapor causes lung cancer. (and not metal fume fever, which would not have a half-life.). Clarification would be helpful. Acids can remove zinc coating. Examples of such acids, are vinegar (acetic acid), hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid), sulfuric acid, nitric acid, etc., etc. SLAG.
February 25, 20215 yr The only thing I can find regarding the biological half life of zinc states it can still be detected from 6-43 days in rats depending on the region of the body. The longest being 43 days in the amygdaloid cells. As for the radioactive half life the longest is for the zinc-65 atom which is 244 days. Zinc-65 is the most stable zinc atom. Pnut
February 25, 20215 yr Author 8 hours ago, Mikey98118 said: I think that would be a good idea. There are likely somme people just waiting to try making your burner. Alright - let’s tell a story! So I started to make the gas accelerator from the advanced Mikey burner, but had no luck, my brazing skills are... subpar at best. So I ran out to Home Depot and found that a 1/8” mnpt to mnpt coupler had the right ID to tap with 1/4-28 for my mig tip (.6mm) so I grabbed on of those and a 1/8” fnpt to fnpt coupler and connected it to my 4” x 1/8” pipe nipple, and angle ground the accelerator as smooth as I could get it (you see the pics - not great) after reading a bunch of your posts. For my burner body I drilled 1/2” inch holes into my the 3/4” pipe nipple, and cleaned up with the angle grinder, then beveled the edges out and in per your instructions. Unfortunately my air slots ended up a bit bigger than intended, there’s much more hole than there is pipe in that spot. As you can see in the images. I let my excitement get the best of me here, and turned on the burner with a step flare to 1”. I could barely open the choke before the flame blew itself out. So then I increased the step using that angle grind and hammer technique to get the 1 1/4” pipe to fit over my 1” spacer. I adjusted that until the flame would reasonably stay lit as I opened the choke, and that’s what you see in “bench test” picture. After the bench test, I cut a little bit off the end of the flare to shorten it a bit, and then played with its position and I was able to open the choke a bit more, but with a very similar flame - so no pictures there. Realized at this point I hadn’t cut the burner body to size, so I did that (approx 7”) - and put it back together, and I ended up with a flame that was better- closer to this color in the center, but a brighter blue (not the glowing white) on the outside. Then I read some more forum posts, and beveled the 1/8” x 3/4” bell to help generate smoother air flow into the burner, and that once again made the inner hollow part bigger but still had the brighter exterior envelope. Finally, I added some aiming screws to the bell to ensure my nozzle was centered, and that seemed to “center” the flame at the end of the burner, and increased the rate at which the choke could open before the flame was blown out, but no changes to color, and there were still two distinct envelopes. Then I popped in the forge, and poof, you have the pictured flame. As an aside, I got the first coat of satanite on.
February 25, 20215 yr GOOD story! You certainly know how to follow systematic problem solving methods. I post the one change at a time rule frequently, there are some 50,000 members in about 150 countries around the world and lots of folks don't know the technique. I'm looking forward to seeing your forge at working / welding heat. What's your dog's name? That calm head is just begging me for a scritching. s/he looks happy just to be in contact with his/er human. Frosty The Lucky.
February 25, 20215 yr Author That’s Naga, she’s a big baby, if she could be attached to us at the hip she would be. Fortunately troubleshooting is part of my job, as is documentation, and it seems to carry over into my hobbys, which seems to help when I run into issues. I’ll have it up to temp today, going to cure and dry the satanite with a heat gun, then do a full heat and cool cycle, then add my zircopax-wash and repeat.
February 25, 20215 yr Naga looks like a sweetheart. Give her a little loving for me please. I'd do it myself but . . . We have a couple Dachshunds, the boy Baxter turned 11 a month ago and the girl Ronnie is almost 3. Ronnie has adorable polished to a high art. I pity folks who can't live with a dog. Frosty The Lucky.
February 25, 20215 yr One of the tools I ran across is called a conversion chuck; it is a Jacobs chuck with standard grinder threads, so that it can be used on angle grinders to drill with. More interesting is that it can chuck 1/4" mandrels, allowing the whole list of die grinder accessories to be easily employed in standard angle grinders, including small diameter cutoff discs, grind stones, and drum sanders; these chucks cost about $11
February 25, 20215 yr 4 hours ago, Frosty said: I pity folks who can't live with a dog. Oh no, what's an allergic feller like me to do! Guess I'll just wipe off these tears with all this saved money I have lying around Asa_walrus, just wanted to say nice work. Making a Mikey burner look pretty isn't easy. I know what you mean about the slots. Everything's going to plan, then you wobble off your lines a bit, and you have a really uneven edge, so you go back and take more material off to compensate and you end up with extra large slots. Just a quick tip, if there's ever a next time for ya: a 1/8"-shaft carbide burr on a dremel will let you remove material quickly without gouging the corners like what happened with your grinding disk. The dremels have juuust barely enough power to plunge the slot in this pipe, but don't let them crash into anything or the burr's shaft will get bent. Not saying you should re-do anything. It seems to be doing its job just fine More importantly, how on EARTH did you do that satanite coating on your coffee table while making so little mess??? That's really impressive! No newspapers or anything??
February 25, 20215 yr Author 1 hour ago, twigg said: More importantly, how on EARTH did you do that satanite coating on your coffee table while making so little mess??? That's really impressive! No newspapers or anything?? The secret is that my girlfriend and I both want to forge stuff, she tends to be better at fit and finish stuff, while I’m more of the tinker and build type, so I took care of the burner, and general construction plans, and she did the execution on the forge, cutting the blanket, doing the coatings, etc. Her neatness makes me look absolutely terrible. You can tell who did which part. As you can tell I still have no idea how the flame turned out so unexpectedly, because with how bad the build was going, I thought it was gonna be terrible, I almost gave up and bought a forge after my first few cuts didn’t go to plan. The aforementioned girlfriend convinced me to keep going, so I finished it, then posted it here all while telling her “time to get some hard criticism and regret posting this, based on Mikeys post history, I’m gonna get an earful.”
February 25, 20215 yr The first flame pictures you took, did you use a smart phone camera? If so, I think the camera settings auto adjusted for the brightness of the forge wall. That may be why the flame looks so transparent in the forge but not in the open air test. If you have the time, try this: Get your girlfriend to help out. Have one person with their hand on the valve and ready to ignite the flame, and one person ready with the camera. Start with the forge fully cold (room temp!). One person hits the valve, one person gets the picture before the forge wall gets bright. Compare THAT picture to the open air test. Make sure the person holding the camera is ready to go as soon as the flame is lit, but not so close that they or the camera gets burnt. I'm a rookie here, so if Frosty or Mikey tell you I'm full of bologna, take their word over mine.
February 25, 20215 yr 13 hours ago, pnut said: Zinc-65 is the most stable zinc atom. Never trust an atom, they make up everything. ASA tell your girlfriend, I said she does beautiful work. My wife is the same about details, drives me wacko at times.
February 25, 20215 yr 3 minutes ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said: Never trust an atom, they make up everything. In grad school for experimental atomic physics, can confirm. If I ever make it through, that quote's going on my dissertation.
February 25, 20215 yr What a charming idea; of course it all depends on the spin you put on it so it's up to you!
February 25, 20215 yr You know Thomas, with all these puns you might leave a bad flavour in someone's mouth. All we're looking for is a quantum of consideration.
February 26, 20215 yr Well as Higgs the Bosun used to say....(come to think of it, *nothing* he used to say will meet the TOS here...NEVERMIND!)
February 26, 20215 yr Author Soooo got all the coatings on and dried up, the flame looks the same to the naked eye albeit a bit brighter, as this picture, and the previous pictures, except when starting up, there’s more flicks of yellow at the edge, until I get to the point where I can open the choke. At which point it turns to picture 1. My 90% zircopax mixture seems to be working, as evidenced by the second two pictures after I turned the forge off. Note the second has not been “light-adjusted” by the camera, the first has so I can see hot spots, looks like I still need to adjust flame location, to get a better swirl. It’s definitely reradiating heat though, which is promising. Hopefully I can get to welding temp ( first forge/ burner, so I have no idea what that looks like) the burner seems to run well as low as 5psi below which point I hear it start to waver. It smoothly runs well up through 20psi, with little change in flame character. All in all, I think I have a decent first forge to learn some bladesmithing on. But first, I’ll try some leaves.
February 26, 20215 yr That is very hot for having a wide open space at the near end. You has arrived! All that is left is efficiency; as in $$$. It is time to use a baffle wall near the open end of your forge, and start saving lots of $$$.
February 26, 20215 yr Author For transparency sake there was a fire brick in front while I was heating it up.
February 26, 20215 yr Author There’s an entire section of Home Depot, though I’m not surprised you didn’t see it, it can be a bit tough to find.
February 26, 20215 yr 15 hours ago, ASA_Walrus said: I think I have a decent first forge to learn some bladesmithing on. You HAVE built yourself a good plenty hot enough forge but I HIGHLY recommend you not bladesmith ON it, that's what the: anvil vise and bench are for. Seriously, that is an outstanding first forge and burner, you're going to have more problems with melting your work than welding. Frosty The Lucky.
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.