Vevor 2 Burner Gas Forge tubes glowing and fire in the choke holes after couple hours usage

[Mikey98118]

I think that you will always need to walk a narrow path with those burners; not that you can't learn to live with them, but all the advice we give must be looked over carefully. For instance the advice to install baffle walls against the rear exhaust opening, and about one inch away from the front opening, will need to be taken with a large dose of caution. You may need to move the front baffle wall a little further away than we recommend. You may even need to move the back wall a little away from the rear exhaust opening. Why? To keep from building up back pressure, which will interfere with the burners. How much back pressure a burner can deal with depends on how strong the burner is.

So, why not just forget all about baffle walls? The reason that will not work is; those walls help maintain internal heat levels in the forge. No baffle walls means that the burners have to be turned up higher to do the same job; this will contribute to overheating the burners...and on and on. You have a dance to learn.

[Absinthe]

Okay, cleared the bricks off the bottom, and setup doorways.

How's this

Bricks removed from floor, doorways established. 

Edited May 14 by Mod30
remove duplicated photos.

[Goods]

You might want to give a little gap between the bricks and the forge faces. You want to reflect heat back on into the forge without creating much a restriction on the exhaust flow. Also, the way you have it right now all the exhaust has to come out the front, directly towards you…

Keep it fun,

David

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

A good start. Make everything adjustable. If you put a full brick across the back, on the bench, you can use 2 partial bricks for the door. With the 2 partial bricks, you can adjust the rear opening as desired.

Take the two pieces of brick from the back, use them for spacers on top of the full brick on the bench at the front. Sit your split brick across the front, on top of the two pieces. Heat goes up, don't leave a side open, leave a bottom window open. Adjust the rear opening as required.

Just a piece of Cake or Brick (LOL)

Neil

[Absinthe]

Applying what I have gotten so far, I was able to get the inside quite yellow! Metal was getting far hotter, and moving much more easily. I made a quick 4130 cold chisel and with a simple squared off end I was able to slice a piece of steel electric panel cover. 

I had 2 partially worked pieces that were supposed to be hooks, that I gave up on the other night, and I was able to get them to move all kind of easily.

I had to use my too thin tongs, but with the metal moving better they were nearly useful. 

I saw some temperatures where the metal almost looked wet, so I assume I am getting closer to welding temps, which I was nowhere near.

I didn't go back to my way thick tongs in process since I didn't have a lot of time. However, when I heard the sputtering death rattle and I saw the bottom quarter of the tank was all frosty... I decided I was done for the evening.

So it seems that lots more pressure is quite helpful, but I was only able to work for 1-1/2 hour before that particular tank got too cold. I assume that I could somehow operate lower, but no way of knowing what pressure I was working at, and I turned it off at the regulator.

Live and learn. Next time perhaps I will attack the thick chunky tongs.

 

 

[Goods]

Yeah, if you steel is starting to look wet on the surface, you’re getting to welding heat. You can back out the temperature and save fuel, you don’t need to work most steel at that temperature, and it could be too high for some types of steel. Really high carbon steel and some alloy steels will crumble at that temperature. (That’s what smiths mean when they say they “cottage cheesed” a piece of steel.) The higher the carbon the lower the welding temperature is also.

It’s great when it all comes together isn’t it! Hey, looks like you mixing tube stay cool also! Yeah!

 

Keep it Fun,

David

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

To combat the frozen Propane tank, sit it in a Pail/Garbage Can/Big Bucket of water. This acts  as a 'Heat Sink'. The other choice is to join 2 Propane tanks in Parallel with a T-Fitting and one regulator. This cuts the draw off each bottle, in half of what your draw is, using one bottle.

Neil

[George N. M.]

Also, you can get a larger tank which has more mass.  I have had freezing problems with running a 20# tank but have had little or no such problems with a 30# tank.

BTW, are you getting your propane from an exchange place or an actual propane supplier?  If you are using exchange tanks there is a good probability that you are paying more than you would from a propane supplier and exchange places are famous for shorting the fills.  You may be paying for a full tank but only getting one that is 80% full.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Absinthe]

20 hours ago, Goods said:

 

It’s great when it all comes together isn’t it! Hey, looks like you mixing tube stay cool also! 

Well that was a 1-1/2 hour session. I will hold my opinion on the tubes' coolness until I have a 2 or 3 hour session. It hadn't happened right away in the past. but it is feeling like a step in the right direction.

I used to do some airbrushing and in the beginning I used cans of compressed air because I didn't have a compressor. That stuff would freeze up as it got used. This felt like that, only much bigger. I kind of thought I might be running it too fast and that might be causing it. But, still learning. I will keep an eye out for a wye or other connector.

I was getting Blue Rhino exchanges. I see that they only fill the 20 lb tanks to 15 lbs. Shrinkflation, just like the candy bars...

Last refill I went to TSC and they have a machine that they hook up to the tank and pump it full. Paid less to fill two bottles than to exchange 1. 

I have 3 bottles (well 4) and I may try to find a tee or wye to connect 2 and see if that helps.

One of my bottles is an old style one with the POL that I had to get an adaptor to those acme threads. They still filled it. When they refuse I will probably take it to an exchange or cut it up to make a forge. However, I have access to an unlimited supply of refrigerant tanks so destroying a perfectly good outdated propane tank seems wrong. 

Edited May 15 by Mod30
Excessive quoting

[Frosty]

Got those bad boys rocking, excellent! It looks like they're way more burner than you need in that size forge. I suggest you turn the psi down once the forge comes to the desired color. Do it by stages and take notes. You don't have a gage so put a mark on the regulator knob and count turns from closed. Once you find the butter zone you'll find 1/4 turn up or down is a BIG adjustment. 

The other thing to try is shutting the back burner off when it comes to the desired temp. The problem with this being that the burner that is off will act like a chimney AND provide another path for exhaust so close the choke sleeve. 

Yes, when your steel is a wet or watery yellow it is at welding temp, two pieces at this temp will weld on contact. Be careful a forge that HOT will melt thin sections while you're waiting for a thicker section to come to heat. And THAT is part of the learning curve we call heat management. 

I run a 100lb. tank in the shop and maybe at a demo if there'll be more than one forge going. Otherwise I run a 40lb. tank at demos so it won't "freeze."

By 80% full he means 80% of what is supposed to be in the tank. Propane tanks are never filled more than 90%, it's a liquid that expands and contracts a LOT with temperature changes. A properly filled 20lb. tank should hold 5.5 gl max. Exchanges often short you a gal or more. 

One last tip on using the forum. You don't need to quote everybody you respond to. In your last post David would know exactly who you were talking to without the quote. And there is ZERO reason to quote Neil to say you have experience with drawing pressurized gas and the temp drop. Undoubtedly said it better than I just did. 

Minimizing quotes until you really need them will keep you off the mod's radar. They've edited and told you about excessive quoting already, ignoring the warnings usually results in having all your replies moderated and that REALLY ticks them off.

Don't worry, you're not in the dog house, this is part of the learning curve and other members try to level the curve when we can.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Absinthe]

Thanks for. The advice. There doesn't seem to be a "reply" per-se so the quote was the only way I could figure out how to respond. My bad, I will learn eventually. Seems most of the web based forums are on the way out and everything is done is FB groups, Reddit, or Discord. And like in the past, every web forum seems to be using slightly different software. At least one can post pictures here, so there's that 

 

Tonight, after not too long maybe 30 minutes that tank bottomed out with the freezing and the pressure dropped enough that it got silly. So I closed the valve and put on a new tank and once I gave it some pressure it lit itself back up. But it never sounded quite right and stayed in that dark eerie red phase. Finally I saw one of the tubes glowing. So, I turned off the ball valve re-arranged a few things then turned it back on. When it re-lit it sounded smooth again and quickly got up to yellow and started working nice. I decided I was going to revisit those ugly tongs. I cleaned up the jaws some, and got the bosses squished down to a reasonable thickness (for now) then cooled the tips and flipped one off to the side and put the other back in the forge rein side in. I was able to get it to move somewhat ... Then my wife yelled out and said the neighbor wanted us to visit and would I go over and make an appearance and an excuse for her. Darn, I was just getting into a rhythm. Anyway, feels like I might be getting somewhere but the forge is off for the night, perhaps next time. Looks like an inch or two in length. Unfortunately I was fighting it when the forge was sputtering. Once it got to running again, it was moving much better. Still good ng to take some concerted effort to draw these out, but it no longer feels insurmountable. 

[Absinthe]

Just found out I got warned. Apparently, it went to my gmail account which I don't check. But this site seems to have something against my hotmail account and try as I might I can't seem to get the validation message to go there. Meh, I will stay away from the quote button. I can't remember which website, but the forum looked to be laid out similar. each message had a "quote" and "reply" side by side and you could do either. This one seems to lack a reply, so I guess the paradigm is just add a new comment to the bottom. I am not sure how to indicate what message is being replied to, but no matter I guess people can figure it out. I will too. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Absinthe... This how most folks reply instead of quoting, or if a quote is required just edit the quote to shorten it and only include the pertainet part. The main reason for that is a lot of our worldwide members still have to rely on dial up internet or pay extra for data and needless quotes use data/bandwidth, so we try and help them out. If you want to you can change your email address in profile settings.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Absinthe]

got it

 

[Frosty]

Directly under the last post in a thread is a text window labeled reply. Most times folks will know who you're responding to if you are picking up those comments. Sometimes it's a long thread and can wander away from what you want to address and a quote might be okay still a quote carries a lot of extra baggage than just the bit you want, it expands to the whole post or links to the position in the thread, and if that post has links they get included. Not to mention photos and those burn lots of bandwidth. 

How I refer to another's post in a thread is with a cut and paste the statement and preface it with, As Chuckles said above, "Pasted content in quote marks." This also helps keep me from bogging a thread down with lots of unnecessary text when all I needed was part of a sentence or similar. As you might have noticed I can be pretty long winded, quoting one of my posts might get you an in person visit from the mods!

It's just part of the learning curve. It's common for newcomers to think this forum operates the same way the one they are used to does. Nope, I still grit my teeth here but it's just part of the garden party rules and I like the party.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Absinthe]

Long winded... perhaps we might share that trait. Anyway, unless the board changes how it works with my email, I will likely get banned before I get any good kind of warnings.

So, now, back to forging

I was able to draw out perhaps an inch or so maybe even two. The boss and nib are kind of ugly, but they are also still pretty thick, so I may get a chance to clean them up. 

This stock was pretty near 1x1 I think it is 1x7/8 or 1x3/4 ... in any event, I will complete these some day but if I try with this stock again I will visit the band saw and split that thickness first. I am guessing by the heft, that each side of these is well enough to make both tongs anyway. But I digress. Live and learn.

I'm getting somewhere, especially that I have a little better grip on the heat aspect of this forge. Next, just ever so more control and I might not run through a bottle of gas so quickly.

[Frosty]

Just change your email address on the forum. Click your Avatar, select Account settings, select Email address, Change. It is the second one down on the menu. Make your change and save or click OK or whatever. I'll assume you can figure that much out.

If you don't know how to do something just ask someone will give you a hand. Asking admin or a moderator will at best take a couple days to get a response, there aren't but a few and they're hands are full stomping bugs.

Good GRIEF 1" x 1"?!?!  3/8"x 3/4" makes nice tongs, 3/8" x 1" makes pretty large tongs. 2 RR spikes makes a decent set of basic tongs and they're 5/8" sq. 

Draw your reins on the horn not the face. The horn is a built in bottom fuller which concentrates the energy you impart with the hammer in a small area that directs the force in two opposite directions. Visualize a wedge spreading an object. Once you've forged a series of "notches" drive the high spots down and repeat on a face at 90*. 

Or you can bend a piece of round stock, say 1/2" to fit over the anvil's face like a saddle and use it as a bottom fuller. 

A cross pein hammer works well as a fuller but you have to adjust from striking across the stock to in line with it. 

I have a straight pein I modified from a masonry hammer years ago which lets me strike across the stock and fuller it down. It's just more comfortable motion for me, YMMV.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

19 hours ago, Frosty said:

Got those bad boys rocking, excellent! It looks like they're way more burner than you need in that size forge. I suggest you turn the psi down once the forge comes to the desired color. Do it by stages and take notes. You don't have a gage so put a mark on the regulator knob and count turns from closed. Once you find the butter zone you'll find 1/4 turn up or down is a BIG adjustment. 

Or, employ a shaped brick as a movable internal baffle wall, and turn off one burner, so that you don't need to turn the remaining one down too low and end up with overheating problems again.

One of your early decisions with a two burner forge, is how to use only what you need of that forge to heat small items. This will also greatly ease the problem with your propane cylinder freezing up, and cut your fuel bill in two

Use a cutoff disk to deeply score the brick, and then employ your new chisel to fracture the brick along its scored lines. You can then use the disk to do some finish grinding on its outline, if desired.

So, why use brick? They're cheap, and thick enough not to be easily kncked over, if place on a flat internal floor. Nor is a perfect fit necessary, or even desirable. The brick is used as a movable internal baffle; not as a wall.

s

[Frosty]

I don't think you'd need to do that Mike it looks to me like one of those burners would heat that forge to welding temp. Not evenly but you can balance that by putting most of the exhaust port to the far end from the burner. 

I don't recall if you told us earlier Absinthe, what is the ID of the burner tube on those babies?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Absinthe]

Can't change the email to my hotmail address. When I do it says it is sending a verification email, but it never does, and locks me out until I verify by clicking on that verification email that never arrives to my hotmail account. I have to change it back to my gmail email in order to get the verification email, and unlock the login. 

When I did this, it gave me an area to "contact us" or something like that where I messaged about it. But so far, no feedback. 

Oh, I am trying to draw those reins on the horn. And, I am finally seeing them move somewhat. I just got interrupted yesterday with my wife wanting me to go visit the neighbor, and the bottle running out of gas. I got one of them to start drawing out so it's working. 

I found a local metal place and they have a big drop rack. Most of it is 1018 and 4130. So, I grabbed anything that was 4130 in whatever shape or size was there. Then I grabbed the 1018 in whatever many different sizes and shapes I could because I had no idea what I was going to need, or what I would be able to work with, and so on. So, I have a bunch of various stuff. (I also met with another fellow that is like a drop picker that sells on marketplace by the lb and got a bunch of different S7 and some other 41xx and some 1045... and some other 1018).  So, I have what I have, and it is a mess So I have just been grabbing stuff that "looked like it would work" and it is fairly obvious that I don't have the experience or frame of reference yet to do so effectively. 

I do have some 1/2 or 5/8 (can't remember right now) round bar, and I will probably use that for the next attempt. I just feel somewhat committed to these big ones. I think at some point I will decide I actually have enough and cut them off but not quite yet. Getting there. I will try other fullering. 
 

Like a regular red brick? Or a fire brick?

[Mikey98118]

24 minutes ago, Absinthe said:

Like a regular red brick? Or a fire brick?

I assume this question is for me. Any firebrick will do. You don't need insulating firebrick for internal baffle walls, anymore than with external baffle walls. As to red brick; I don't know of any red firebrick.

[Frosty]

You're trying to forge Chrome molley? It's more of an intermediate steel not something for a beginner. Heat management is WAY more important and it likes different temperatures than simple 10xx steels. Stick with the simple steels until you've developed heat management and hammer skills. The S series steels are even more tetchy. 

This is what Glenn called setting yourself up for failure. Not ultimately but it's hard to learn a new skill by having things fail because they're just too advanced. 

If you're wanting to make chisels, punches, etc. find yourself a piece of coil spring with a wire dia. a bit larger than 1/2", Old spring from the scrap yard or along the highway can be loaded with micro fractures and be problematical to use. Spring shops on the other hand change out suspension frequently doing lift kits and you should be able to pick up nearly brand new spring stock for around scrap$.

Be forewarned modern spring stock is mystery metal, the mills are making it to a performance specification and don't care what the alloy is so long as it meets spec.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

Good morning Frosty. I posted to you earlier, but must have forget to hit send. Anyway, have you looked at Ron Riel's web pages lately? It will put a  smile in your day. Now, if only the rest of us could get our ducks in a row

[Frosty]

I haven't checked in for a couple years, mid Covid I think. I'd been planning on visiting but my Sister moved from Boise so it's unlikely now. 

I see Ribbon burners are a new addition I think I need to suggest a correction to his statement that they are ONLY blown burners. Or maybe word it more clearly, I got lost and couldn't find my way back or find a contact link. Then his whole darned site either got lost or kicked me off. Oh okay, I admit it I got lost and couldn't find my way back. 

Thanks for sparking my memory Mike, I haven't thought about Ron in quite a while.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Absinthe]

the 4130 seems to move okay. I have done a few things with it so far. Punches and chisels and stuff. I have not tried to do anything with the S7 yet, but I got it because it was one of the listed steels that was supposed to make good tools. I just haven't even tried anything with it.  

The stuff I have been having issue with is the 1018, and I honestly believe that is because I am starting off with too large of a piece, and as you know my fire was not cooperative. And 1018 is my current focus until I am ready to do a hardy tool or something of that nature. But I am also considering simply fabricating something along those lines. For now, I have a railroad spike that I have been using as a hot cut. Seems to work okay, and still has a pointy edge so there's that.  

I assume for hot work in geenral, I can just use 1018 anyway, and just be prepared to keep dressing it and be ready to replace it sooner. 

I don't seem to have access to all these springs that people love to recommend. Perhaps some day, but for now, I have what I have, and access to what I have found. Seems like it should be plenty for a while. And if needes be, I have a big long chunk of 2x1/4 5160.

For now, I just want to make some hooks and leaves and whatever other fluff all the beginners make, but I keep taking these little side trips