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.

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.

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...

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 November 16, 20232 yr by Mod30
Fix typo