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Posted by Prometheus on December 3, 2006, 12:41 am
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wrote:
>Your forge is plenty small. Your firebrick isn't the right stuff, as
>others have mentioned, but it should work a lot better than it is. I
>think your torch is at fault. What to do about it is the tricky part.
>
>If you can post a picture or two, it may help us figure out what to do.
>Otherwise, you can try adjusting your burner. Try to figure out some
>kind of choke to reduce the amount of air. Try reducing the pressure
>(you are using a regulator?) and see what happens.
Unfortunately, photography is one thing I don't do- seems like the
couple of times I bought a camera, I managed to break the things right
away. Got sick and tired of throwing away $$$- so no pics.
>Here are some flame pictures:
>http://ronreil.abana.org/richtolean.jpg
The "neutral" flame best illustrates what the flame looks like out of
the torch. It's not a terribly fancy one- just a standard one that
screws to the top of a skinny propane tank and adjusts via a knob at
the back.
I'll try to describe the setup in words- there may be something you
can spot from the description alone.
The firebricks are layered to make a chamber that is about 1" x 1.25"
x 9" long, with one brick stood on edge to block the back. Each brick
has is 1.25" x 4.5" x 9". To direct the flame into the forge, I
drilled a hole halfway down the nine inch length through the narrow
part of the brick, so that the hole is 4.5" long. The nozzle of the
torch is a tight fit in the end of the hole, and when looking into the
opening of the forge, the flame comes straight out of the hole, hits
the far wall, splits in two and swirls back along the top and bottom.
The torch nozzle is essentially a bit of bent pipe with no end on it.
It does not have air holes near the tip (It just occured to me that
that may be important, as the end is fitted into the hole.) I have
been running it fully open.
What happens after the bricks begin to heat up is that glowing red
spots about 1.5" wide gradually develop on the bricks themselves-
first where the flame is coming through the hole, and then spreading
to the top and bottom of the chamber shortly thereafter. As you can
probably guess, the metal is most efficiently heated right on those
spots.
At the mouth of the opening, there is a fairly consistant blue flame
extending out about 1".
>http://ronreil.abana.org/flame.jpg
>http://ronreil.abana.org/sidef.jpg
>http://ronreil.abana.org/burner2.jpg
>They come from here:
>http://ronreil.abana.org/design1.shtml
>There are more pages on this site of interest--you could spend between
>now and Christmas reading it all.
>
>The firebrick you have is probably intended to hold heat. This means it
>will be slow to heat up. A piece of 1/8-1/4" steel rod held in the
>flame will show rough heat changes a lot quicker than your forge body.
I believe it is- several hours after turning the forge off, the bricks
were still very warm to the touch. They were sold as fireplace
liners.
It worked well enough to make what I needed, so I suppose that might
be where it's at for a little while. I got the boss to agree to let
me take a little time to make a metal forge body with the equipment at
work, so once I figure out how to make an appropriate burner, I can go
that route and buy some of that kaowool and line the inside. Lots of
overtime right now, especially with people missing work for the
hollidays, so I might be able to get something more respectable
together fairly soon.
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