who sells good venturi burners?

[ghost blood]

im looking to buy some good burners to build my new forge.

i was going to use my old hells forge burners but i think it makes sense to keep that guy like he is. no reason to rob peter to pay paul. 

my new forge is planned to be 16” long.  i have a 100 pound 14” diameter propane tank im cutting to size.  im going with 3” of wool. the floor will be flat. thinking ill build it up with extra wool then cover with 1/2” kastolite .  i think that should reduce the inside size about 40% compared to a full circular chamber.

that leaves roughly 400 cubic inches.  

i cant seem to find recommendations for good burners makers, thanks for anyone you can recommend.  

i dont really want to build burners if someone is already doing well. i will build if you guys think it’s necessary. thanks again 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Although I have never used them, I've heard good things about the Diablo 1 inch burners from Chile Forge. They are based on Mikey98118's design. I would be very cautious about buying burners from some of the online outlets that say their burners are just like Frosty's T-burners or building them from YouTube directions as most of them are junk and a waste of money.

[ghost blood]

wow, those are not cheap! but maybe worth it. i might just make the forge 12” and get 1.  they do look amazing.   i was hoping for a bit less expensive.  

if anybody else knows of a good maker of t burners or the like please lmk. 

thanks for the reply. have a great day

[Frosty]

Have access to a drill press and $20? Well, okay the drill bits and taps will cost you another $20 but they're a one time buy and you'll have them in the tool box. I have everything except the T fittings to build T burners in a cigar box.

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/43976-t-burner-illustrated-directions/

Why do you keep saying you want to put 3" of refractory blanket in a propane forge? Another inch doesn't improve the heat transfer enough to be worth the loss of volume in the chamber. Honest, I know. 

Use a strip of blanket to make a flat floor but there's no good reason to cut the chamber in half. A single well tuned 3/4" T burner will heat a properly made 20lb. propane tank forge to welding temp. 

When you put the floor in feather the edges of the strip of blanket so it makes a smooth transition to the sidewalls. The flame flow will be more even and it's a lot easier to plaster with Kastolite.

Rigidize the layers as you go. 

Don't buy a T burner, I've seen very few made by people who have a clue. You'd be better off spending a couple hundred bucks on a commercially made burner.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

Chile Forge, and Hybrid burners are the only only commercial burners I know of, which are top of the class; that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of close seconds on the market, for a lot less money. There is a forge group on the Net that sells a simpler version of my burners for about $50. You might find vary little practical difference in your forge. I will try to remember the site and list it here. On the other hand, Frosty is quite right about building his burner design.

[ghost blood]

my idea was the smaller chamber size heats up faster and Is more propane efficient.   was my reason for 3” of wool. 

that might not be true from what i think your saying Frosty.  

are you say that i could have a larger chamber and still be efficient with my propane usage? 

the hybrid burners look reasonable and really nice.  i think that trex is my new burner

thanks for the replies guys!

[Frosty]

A T Rex is a good burner, what size? They burn fuel efficiently and prodigiously. 

There is a significant difference between efficient and effective.

If a burner is producing a neutral flame it's efficient. PERIOD.

If a burner is matched to a well made forge it will heat the work in good time with reasonable economy. That is an EFFECTIVE burner. PERIOD.

A forge and the burners are not two things, they're a machine that has to work well together. You don't know enough yet to design the machine. Your ideas of what will work are only looking at ONE of 3-4 factors that need to be accounted for and balance. 

I HIGHLY recommend you select ONE set of proven forge plans and FOLLOW them as closely as your shop skills allow.

Several of us have answered your 3" forge liner in two different threads and none of us are beginners but you keep saying the same thing. I think a 3" liner will be more efficient. yada yada yada.  It's your shop, your forge build it how you wish, I'm good with that. What gets tiring is saying the same thing repeatedly without effect. Look up Einstein's definition of insanity.

After a while we stop bothering.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ghost blood]

im sorry frosty,  your totally right. i will do as you say and fallow a respected build as close as i can.  i learned a lot from what you wrote. thanks man

[ThomasPowers]

How's the anvil supply out there?   I've chatted with one smith out in Hawaii that found a local london pattern anvil for free.  It had been used for shoeing horses used on plantations back in the day and had been abandoned with the change to tractors.  Shipboard anvils may also show up. DO NOT try to go get the one on the Arizona!

[ghost blood]

thanks for asking because, i scored an 1880s peter wright.  its my baby and i lover er.  it came over on a steam ship and was used by blacksmiths on the island to keep help a small town going during cane days.  its well used but got another 200 years in there for sure. 

[ThomasPowers]

Unbelievable Luck!  How did you go about finding it?

[JHCC]

Also, don't try to use lava flows as a heat source for forging.

(There used to be a video on YouTube of some youngster with more enthusiasm than experience trying to harden a sword by heating it in a lava flow and then pouring water on it from a 2-liter bottle. It was not a success.)

[ThomasPowers]

Not to mention that the sulfur found around lava flows is very bad for steel and is absorbed at high temps.  Now if you had a nice fluid basaltic lave you could perhaps build a muffle furnace, of course standing near enough to use it would be "Half Baked".

[ghost blood]

i had an add out on craigslist and an awesome old timer’s nephew called me. he put me in contact.  i got to talk story with a great guy.  he also sold me my big delta drill press for $200. it was a memorable experience. 

[ThomasPowers]

I've seen amazing changes in just my lifetime; talking with older folks just extends the amazement!  I mean I have actually had a nickel coke---in a bottle from a vending machine.  (It was considered archaic back then; but still in use!)

[Mikey98118]

I can remember getting cokes for a dime out of a machine at a gas station, as a kid.

[ThomasPowers]

10 cents?  Boy were you ripped off!  (Were they in the tiny bottles too?)

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

In the early 60s the body shop where I used to hang out and work on the stock car, had one of those old Coke chest type coolers, where the bottles hung in racks. It took a quarter to get a bottle out. Of course the bottles were ice cold beer.

[Anachronist58]

Little nickel cokes in a stand up machine at the gas station on Telegraph Canyon Road!

Robert Taylor

[Mikey98118]

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

10 cents?  Boy were you ripped off!  (Were they in the tiny bottles too?)

Yup; and worth it on a hot summer day

[Frosty]

The Piggly Wiggly on the walk home from school had a chest cooler in the liquor department that was the perfect temperature. When you popped the top the soda would start to turn to slush. $0.12 a dime for the RC cola and two cents deposit. The employee on shift when we stopped in would give us a bottle crate to bring the empties back. He'd put our preferred soda in the coldest corner for us. Man, there's nothing so good as a headache cold RC cola after a mile+ walk on a 100f+ sunny afternoon. After a while we stopped drinking them on the way home, they never made it so we'd stand outside the entrance drain our soda and return the bottle. The employee stopped charging deposit and giving it back about a minute later. 

Hmmm, I wonder what ever happened to that soda bottle crate?

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Mikey98118]

Okay; payong a dime to Thomas' nickle didn't hurt, but missing the slush...now I'm jealous!

[ThomasPowers]

It was in a small town in Arkansas back in the 1960's.  My grandfather was "frugal", he had lived through the great depression and talked of the year his family had lived in a tent.  When I got to ride in the truck with him delivering minnows to bait shops; there was one part where the truck would run out of gas going up a mountain and if it would coast past a certain point he knew it would then make the crest and go down the windy road  and he could pull into the cheapest gas station on the route!  (Flat bed with a LOT of weight in water, now brake assist or steering assist with the engine off, nowadays I would have been scared fewmetsless!)  He was the one that knew where the nickel cokes were! 

[Leather Bill]

Mom and dad's familys both moved to Texas from Arkansas where they claimed when those old Razorbacks killed hogs they didn't waste anything but the squeal.  Mom's lived near New Hope and Dad's near Caddo Gap.

[ThomasPowers]

They didn't bottle the squeal?---Why that's the best part!  My Mother talks about butchering hogs when she was a girl....