Tuning time for the Chile Forge rebuild

[davidhake]

I'm trying to dial in the Chile Forge I picked up cheap and rebuilt. Not having much experience with this nice of a forge and less than a year of working with a Mr. Volcano one burner as my only gas forge, I could use some advice!

I've attached a video with one burner just after lighting it so it's easier to see. 5 psi with a .040 mig tip that Chile Forge recommended for my altitude of 5100 ft. (Fort Collins, CO)questions:

Questions:

1. For general forging, what color should the flame be? Teal, Blue or light blue?

2. What color for forge welding if I attempt it? Teal, blue or light blue?

I've been told by other Chile Forge owners in my area that 5-6psi for general and 10-15psi for forge welding.

 

 

[Charles R. Stevens]

It’s not so much the flame color for a given temp. Neutral or slightly reducing flame is what we want for forging or welding. It’s the tempeture the walls glow at that are important otherwise.  
I generally run at a very bright orange to forge. It takes longer for the steel to come up to temp but you don’t make sparklers of it. Some alloys like low to high yellow (H13 comes to mind to forge.
high carbon steels will weld at high orange to low yellow wile low carbon will weld at high yellow.
wrought is a PITA to weld in a gasser and forges like butter at high yellow.   
their is an ap that makes your smart phone into a thermometer that reads the emissive color at tells you the temp.
nice thing about temp color is you can work multiple irons with out burning them up or conversely you won’t burn the tip off a knife if your forge is just a couple of hundred biter that the critical temp for the steel. 

[Frosty]

Ditto Charles. It is not the color of the flame that determines temperature it is the color of the forge walls.

Gas forges are "reverberatory" furnaces. Meaning that the flame heats the furnace liner and the IR radiated from the liner is what heats your work. The heat imparted into your work by the flame directly is a small %.

Flame color indicates something else entirely I won't go into now, so as not to confuse things.

Frosty The Lucky.

[davidhake]

Thanks both of you for the insight.

I'm guessing flame color is something to think about for not oxidizing the steel.