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I Forge Iron

Wondering how many burners I need


Tim695

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Hi Everyone,

 

I have made a second forge out of a 20lb propane cylinder. It has 4" or ceramic wool, 1" of Kast-o-light and then I coated it with ITC 100. It has 2, 5 1/2" openings on either end. the back side has f full door that covers the hole, and on the front it has a half door. both are made out of 1/4" plate. I currently have a 3/4" naturally aspairated burner in it that I kind of cobbled together from multiple designs. I think I got all the bad quality of all the designs so I am going to replace the burner with a Frost-T type.

 

The question I have  is should i just use a single 3/4" burner as a replacement or would dual 1/2" burners be better. I am not planning on doing any forge welding in it as I have the other forge for that. but I still want it to get pretty hot while still being pretty efficient as far as gas consumption goes.

 

Thanks in advance.

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Dual 1/2" burners would be better, even if you had only used a 2" thick layer of ceramic fiber blanket. You apparently ended up with a 5" internal diameter in your forge; this means that its diameter to length ratio will encourage back pressure, so going with two half inch burners is now a necessity. I would advice two 3/8" burners instead, but half-inch "T" burners will turn down far enough to work handily.

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Best suggestion for improving efficiency I can give based on your narrative is to cast up some insulated door panels.  1.5" thick Kastolite with a steel angle frame works great.  1/4" plate will certainly help with the radiant losses, until it heats up itself and starts losing energy...

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Thanks Mike,

It never even dawned on me to consider 3/8" burners but that makes way more sense.

 

Larricino,

I wasn't going to bother insulating the doors, but I think I actually will insulate the back door. I won't bother with the front door as I will probably leave it open most of the time. I originally put it on there to aid in forge welding, but I decided to just use the hard brick forge for that. The flux would reek havoc. On the Fibre insulation if it bets past the refractory.

 

Edited by Mod30
Fix typo
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