Flame Check

[Mikey98118]

I hardily agree! Okay, okay, I really like the pooch too (don't tell my cat; he just wouldn't understand)

[ASA_Walrus]

19 hours ago, Mikey98118 said:

I hardily agree! Okay, okay, I really like the pooch too (don't tell my cat; he just wouldn't understand)

Our cats get it, she just gets a different kind of love.

[Frosty]

Glad to see you don't spoil your dog. Dogs should have their own blankie, it teaches them responsibility. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Will-I-am]

some dogs are even spoiled more.....

[ASA_Walrus]

Oh no, so I’ve been playing with it for a few days, and it indeed gets hot, but I definitely have hotspots, and the flame isn’t circulating the chamber correctly, would using satanite to “sculpt” the edges of the “D” portion of the chamber help? I’ve played with the angle a bit and can’t seem to nail one where I don’t have this issue.

[Mikey98118]

Yes.

[D.Rotblatt]

My 2 cents.  With a single burner you will always have a hot spot. The central area of the forge will be hotter.  You need a ribbon burner or multiple burners to get a full forge even heat.  This is not a catastrophe, in fact it's kind of nice to have a hot spot to work with so you can heat the section you are working on.  On the other hand it is not so great for heat treating a blade.

IMHO: In a forge of your shape, if you want to maximize the spread of the heat, I would aim the burner almost horizontal.  The flame will curve down the side of the wall.  At the spot where it hits the floor, put a bump that spreads the flame.  The flame hitting the wall will also cause a lot of radiant heat that will help spread the heat.  I did that on one of my older forges and it worked quite well.  I've gone to ribbon burners since.

Great looking forge and burner flame!  You are good to go, I would say just play with it as it is for awhile and see what you want to do to tweak it once you have more experience with it.

[ASA_Walrus]

I see what you mean, when I close the front off, I get more even heat,  but I definitely can slide my workpiece into different spots for different heats. This thing is a bit of a gas hog, I keep it idle around 10psi, which takes a piece from “working cool” grey-red to orange-yellow working temp in a minute or two, overall it takes about 20 minutes at 15-20psi for the forge to really get up to temp. Interestingly to me, I don’t really have a dragons breath. But I’m new so that may be normal.

 

My next forge will definitely be ribbon burner, just so I can make it a bit longer and get more even heat. I was thinking of trying to embed ceramic blanket in kast-o-lite for the general construction. But that’s a project for 6-9 months from now once I have some experience under my belt (and a mig welder, but there’s still a grinder needed too since I’ll be doing that by hand for now. Ugh the horrors of building a workshop) 
 

Hey Mikey! I had a question for you, given all your years of experience, I’d figured you’d either tried this once, or decided it was a bad idea before I even thought of it. But what about forcing laminar flow inside a 2inch region near the inlet of the burner using a bunch of small diameter pipes inscribed in the larger pipe. Each individual mini-pipe would force an proportionally smaller Reynolds number and “laminar-ize” the flow before the mixing length starts. I haven’t done any envelope math on the flow rates here, but I’d imagine at a slight increase in production cost, you’d get the sweet guarantee of laminar flow, even with poor construction like mine haha.

[Mikey98118]

Laminar flow of flames are quite different from turbulent flow of flames, since they are mostly generated by vary different burner designs. What is promising about your thought is the fact that some turbulent flames are much gentler than others. A "T" and a Mikey burner both have turbulent flames, but the "T" burner's flames are far gentler than what comes out of a Mikey burner. There are advantages to be wrung from either type of flame. A third type of flame comes from a properly constructed and tuned ribbon burner; this is as close an equivalent to laminar flames as turbulent flames are ever likely to get. I do not say that your series of tubes idea cannot work. In fact there is a glass working burner that is very similar to it; or at least there was several years back, when I ran across one. What I am hinting around at, is that ribbon burners already can do the same trick

Oh, yea? So how come Mikey ain't jumping all over them if he thinks they're so fine?! How come is that, then?!?

I'm old and tired. Eighteen years ago I sat on my high-speed tube burner design for six months, until someone provoked me into producing them in a fit of anger. I'm eighteen years more tired and determined not to jump down a new rabbit hole these days. I'd much rather see someone else jump in at the deep end (if I can just manage that).

[ASA_Walrus]

I’m young (25) and foolhardy, and have a tendency to over complicate things, so it’s usually something I’d dive right into attempting. 

That being said... going forward? Probably gonna be a ribbon burner for me. Only because you can make them in a variety of sizes to fit the forge, and they give good control over air and propane flow rates. Why re-invent the wheel, when I can spend more time making things. 
 

Only reason I didn’t make one for my first forge was I didn’t want to jump headfirst into the deep end of a new hobby without knowing if I’d like it or not.

[Mikey98118]

Not only do I think ribbon burners, if properly made and tuned, are dynamite. I think they are the only burner design that can be badly constructed and still end up operating quite satisfactorily.

[pnut]

2 hours ago, Mikey98118 said:

In fact there is a glass working burner that is very similar to it;

Are you referring to the pine ridge burners? I was looking at those a couple years ago and wondering how well they performed. 

Pnut

[Mikey98118]

No; not Pine Ridge, but it is an interesting site!

Lets see, going back to about 2006, I was looking through Warm Gglass equipment sites ( not a company name, but an art movement). As I vaguely remember it, this torch was made with several pure silicate tubes, put out a wide laminar flame, that was supposed to be ridiculously hot. Sorry, but between old age and two strokes that's the best I can recall.

The melting point of pure silicon is 2577.2 F; quite a bit higher than the copper used in oxyacetylene torch tips.