Frosty Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 I've thought about adding zircopax to Kastolite for the burner block but haven't built another, maybe if I do. You don't have to, mine don't have anything fancy done to them except a quick coat of Plistex. I welded strips of 3/4" x 1/2" expanded metal to the edges of the plenum for a good bond with the Kastolite and pressed the plenum itself in just enough for an air tight seal, 1/4"+ maybe. I don't recall but it wasn't a lot. Read on and give a shout when you succumb to the confusing nature of conversations here. I'll be more than happy to answer even if I have to make something up. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 1, 2022 Author Share Posted November 1, 2022 Perfect thank you! Hopefully my next post will have some pictures to share. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 1, 2022 Share Posted November 1, 2022 Cooool, we LOVE pictures! Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 5, 2022 Author Share Posted November 5, 2022 Alright a little progress has been made. I have my plenum welded up. I still need to clean it up a bit. Pay no attention the the exceptionally bad welds. I'm using a $100 harbor freight flux core and I'm not very good with it yet (if that's even possible...) I also spent some time doing some steel barrel cutting, shaping and welding. Ran out of wire so I had to put that on the back burner. All puns aside it's actually a good thing that I had to stop welding because the front and back panels are 2 inches too short. D'oh! Finally I put a t-burner together and tried it in my first tragic attempt at making a forge. It lit up first try and daaaang it roars. I LOVE that. Much better sounding (and hotter) than my cheap chinesium burner that I got on amazon. I didn't have the time to tune it or to let the forge come up to temp so the only picture that I have is probably not enough to really know what I need to do to tune it but there it is. I think that I have been able to combine most of the advice that I have received here into my design. The burner will be bottom mounted facing up at a slight inward angle to increase the distance before impingement on the wall. The forge floor will have around 2.5 inches of the width of the floor raised by about 1/2 inch along the side where the burner will be installed to reduce the risk of debris and flux going down into the burner. I have an extra 2 inches in the bottom of the forge for a layer of perlite. Going with a Frosty NARB powered by a Frosty T burner. The forge box will be 12.5" long and it will be a semi-cylinder with a radius of 4 inches. So the floor will be around 8 inches wide. Minus the raised edge for the burner this will be about 300 cu. in. This will be for blade making especially heat treating so I feel that the low ceiling won't be an issue but I'd like your take on that. So now for my questions! -Casting/curing Kastolite. I intend to be very careful to add water only if needed and only a tiny bit. I am aware of this but I have very little experience in gauging that point where it doesn't need more. Any tips? Also just any tips on using Kastolite? -With my burner being bottom mounted it will be partially imbedded in perlite. I have read that these burners can start backfiring when the plenum gets hot. I have seen a couple ideas that could help like increasing the refractory mass of the multi-hole burner head. O just moving it out further from the forge. Now because I'll be in an extra 2 inches on insulation my idea is to essentially to fabricate and weld a radiator on the back of the plenum to help the heat escape by increasing the surface area outside of the insulation. Does this sound like a bad or a rad idea? I can't see what could go wrong but then... best to ask. As always thank you for your time gentlefolk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 5, 2022 Share Posted November 5, 2022 Do you plan on a steel porch on your barrel vault AKA D shaped forge? I highly recommend a full thickness fire brick for the porch, it helps keep the heat off the forge shell. If you tip your T burners downwards to impinge the far side of the forge floor or upwards to impinge similarly on the roof, without firing straight into the corner your brick pile forge will heat more evenly. The flame looks pretty good, maybe a smidge rich but not much. A friend of mine runs a bottom up ribbon burner in his main forge and welds frequently. He's never mentioned having to clean it out seems the flame prevents junk small enough to fit through the outlets from falling in. I don't have any tips for making Kastolite easy to mix or apply, I mixed it using a steel ladle like a pestle then graduated to a pipe nipple and cap. I applied it by spanking it in place using a trowel and mallet until I saw free moisture on the surface. I made sort of a spring tool to beat on with the far end on the trowel and the outside end on a prop. Vibrating didn't didn't work. The plenum doesn't get hot enough to be a problem, the air fuel flow keeps it cool enough. It's the burner block itself that got hotter than ignition temp or hot enough to raise the velocity of propagation till it burns back into the plenum. Keeping the burner turned up solved that for as long as I want to spend at the forge in a session. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted November 6, 2022 Share Posted November 6, 2022 Like Snarling Iron? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 6, 2022 Share Posted November 6, 2022 Sort of, more like a spring top tool with just an arm rather than a spring. You strike the arm rather than the trowel which is where the connection to a snarling iron fits. If you knap flint, etc. it fits the description of an "indirect percussion" tool. Indirect refractory spanker? People wouldn't forget it. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 7, 2022 Author Share Posted November 7, 2022 The IRS might want their name back though! I soaked the crayons in water for a couple of hours and the paper came off pretty easily. I found that without the paper Crayola brand crayons fit in a 21/64th sized hole pretty well. The mold is made from a piece of an old formica desktop. It is 1.75"H x 3"W x 8.5"L. I'm using Pam as a releasing agent. My strategy was just to make 1 pound batches of Kastolite and packing each one into the mold very tightly before adding the next batch. Used a paint stick to push the cement down in between the crayons. 2 passes per cement batch and 3 more after the mold was full. I also used the flat of the stick to push the cement in along the edges when the mold was full. There was a little bit of water at the top when I finished tamping. I ended up using about 2.25 pounds of refractory. I'll keep it covered with damp towels and above 80 degrees until tomorrow afternoon and we'll see what we got! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 7, 2022 Share Posted November 7, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 9, 2022 Author Share Posted November 9, 2022 I left the burner in the mold for around 22 hrs at temps 80 degrees F or above. Cracked the mold and gave it another 20hrs. All the while keeping it covered by 2 layers of wet towels. I then baked out most of the wax by putting the whole thing in the oven pointing down into a pyrex dish. 1hr at 225 did the trick fine. I them immediately took the burner to the shop and drilled out the rest of the wax (there wasn't much left) and put it in my little brick pile forge (~155 sq. in.) to fire the burner up to temp while it was still warm from the oven. Dunno if that helped but I figured that it couldn't hurt to have the first heat be one event. It lit up fine first try. I started it at 1 PSIG and with the bricks spread out to keep the temp low to start. I increased the heat incrementally over a 4 hour period by closing up the forge bricks then slowly raising the fuel pressure. About 4 PSIG/hr. I got it up to about 17 PSIG before my tank froze but I didn't get a picture because I was waiting to get to 20... The picture is of the forge at 7 PSIG. The flame was definitely reducing though I am not experienced enough to tell how much. Just that my test piece of mild steel wasn't forming scale. Obviously the color is completely wrong. It was more of a medium orange. I found out after the burn that my nozzlettes had a little bit of Kastolite blocking them which I assume is why the flames are irregular. I cleared all of the ports out so I should get better performance there next time. On to the forge bit! I was waiting because I didn't know exactly how big or what shape the burner was going to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted November 9, 2022 Share Posted November 9, 2022 Looks pretty good Marc, uneven flames happen until all the construction crud is blown out. I had pretty good results by hooking the shop vac where the T burner screws in and giving each outlet a gentle blow with the air hose. Once all the outlets are evened out the fuel ratio might improve. If not give a shout I'll help you tune it. Frosty The lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted January 24, 2023 Author Share Posted January 24, 2023 It has been quite some time! Life has a tendency to take over and keep one from their hobbies on occasion, am I right? I have had many days to ponder what I actually want the forge for and if what I have been designing is really what I need. In retrospect I should have asked these questions in the first place but my excitement got the best of me. I want to be able to make hammer heads, hardy tools, platens and other such things. I need a forge that can handle this kind of large, blocky shaped steel efficiently. I will make/use other forges or do brick forges for other purposes but really this is what I'm trying to accomplish. So at the risk of beating a dead horse that was beaten to death all I'm saying is that I'm worried that I'm going to use all of my budget on something that won't be especially good at what I'm trying to do. Any recommendations on dimensions of the forge and the size of the burner(s)? The little "Frosty N.A.R.B." is amazing for brick forges btw! I have been enjoying playing with it quite a bit. I'm currently waiting on a few more bricks so I can work on an octopus sculpture for my wife. So Frosty if you're reading this... thanks again. My mind has been whirling with wanting to test different sizes and configurations of naturally aspirated multi-port burners. I hope that I will be posting about those ideas within the year. As an aside I intend to compile everything that you guys have taught me here into one easy to read post with pictures of the forge that I make. I think that it's warranted since this thread was originally about making a Chilli Forge clone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swedefiddle Posted January 24, 2023 Share Posted January 24, 2023 Congratulations, Marc The best size of Forge, is the size you have, that works. Before the turn of a few years, you will have a couple more Forges. Each one, you will learn some more. There is no such thing as a 'Perfect Forge'. Relative to what? The first mistake a lot of people make is, to make a BIG Forge, then they can't figure out how come they are using so much fuel. You said your Propane Tank is freezing, put it into a pail/garbage can/barrel of water. The water becomes the 'Heat Sink' and stretches out your work time. The other choice is to connect 2 or 3 bottles together, this cuts down the draw from each bottle. Then it will take a real long time to freeze. It is because of the surface area of the liquid Propane in the bottle. A Propane bottle for a business or a residence is lying on it's side, this increases the surface area. Enjoy the Journey. Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted January 24, 2023 Author Share Posted January 24, 2023 Congratulations for what exactly? Thank you very much for explaining about propane tanks and for the tips on how to mitigate the freezing. I'm not looking to discuss the "One Forge To Rule Them All". I'm looking to discuss a forge specifically designed to make hammers, to make it as small as possible so that it is efficient. My question about size is exactly so I don't make my forge too big. I don't want to waste time and money figuring it out since I'm guessing someone here has already taken the time. If you think that that is trying to take a shortcut or being impatient I can see your angle but in this economy, if I can skip making a forge or two and maybe a year or two to get where I'm trying to go, I figure it's worth asking people who know more than me. Why "reinvent the wheel" you know? I will experiment with this if I must. But typing words only cost the time it takes to type them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swedefiddle Posted January 24, 2023 Share Posted January 24, 2023 Good Morning, I started with a brick Forge. Sometimes I go back to it. Don't turn your back on what you have, that pile of bricks will do what you want, now. You can adjust it's size just by adding a layer. If you close off the top of the mouth, you can keep some of that heat in. You can make it taller, longer, wider, by adding bricks. You can make a radius top with 1/3 of a piece of large pipe, weld angle iron on the edges so they can sit on bricks, you can make it as tall and long as you like. Congratulations for K.I.S.S. Keep it Stupid Simple (or whichever way you wish to say it). Forget about the Jones', you are doing fine! Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted January 24, 2023 Author Share Posted January 24, 2023 Neil! Thank you for clarifying that and for your patience with me. I do appreciate it Like I was saying a couple of posts back, "...my excitement got the best of me." Learnin' is occurin'! Back to the anvil with me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted January 24, 2023 Share Posted January 24, 2023 Marc; yes "life is what happens when you are making other plans". I ran into the "going to have fun when I retire" and then got hit with the "Oops major health issue less than a year after retirement." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 That's rough man. No time like the present. I have squandered many years of my life not knowing what it was that I wanted for myself or how to take care of myself properly. Now I know a little more, maybe I'm a bit wiser, and if I'm lucky I still have enough lead in my pencil to achieve a few of those dreams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.