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Posted by Chilla on January 5, 2007, 6:54 pm
Please log in for more thread options Hooray! Charles
Prometheus wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Just a followup (for anyone who may be interested) about my recently
> built forge. Following a suggestion that I aim the burner a little
> more towards the back yeilded some pretty amazing results. The tubing
> that I used to mount the burner to the forge is a little larger than
> was neccessary to allow the burner to slide in, so I had a pair of
> washers filling the gap and keeping the burner at a right angle to the
> side of the forge.
>
> Taking out the burner and removing the front washer so that I could
> use the set screws to set the burner at a slight angle towards the
> back (at an estimate, I'd say 3-4 degrees) made all the difference in
> the world.
>
> Where it was very impressive before, with gouts of fire coming out the
> front and it's relatively loud presence, it is now very obviously a
> signifigantly hotter forge. With the gas swirling backwards and then
> reflecting and travelling the full length of the forge before exiting,
> I was able to set it so that I had a purely blue flame inside, and no
> flame escaping the outside edge. It's also a little quieter.
>
> That alone doesn't mean all that much to me, but the real convincing
> came when I took a look at the 1/2" rod of A-36 that I stuck in there
> before I lit the thing. I'm not going to claim it did anything
> spectacular or unbelievable like melt the steel into a little puddle-
> but I did time how long it took for the bar to get to a bright orange
> color. It only took about three minutes from the initial firing, and
> it appeared to be a uniform color throughout from the tip at the very
> back of the forge to about 1" from the outside edge (about 17 inches).
> By that time, the firebrick on the bottom was well on it's way to
> fully glowing as well.
>
> I'll note again that I am using a 0-60 psi regulator, and this was
> with the regulator and the blower gate both open to almost full-bore.
> That alone should account for some of the extra heat, but angling the
> burner back seemed to be the thing that really made it hum.
>
> So, if anyone is still reading this after all that- despite Pete S.'s
> fantastic help and advice, I think I may have to disagree that the
> pipe forge design is signifigantly better without an insulated and
> air-tight back- it just requires a little minor tweaking to get it to
> work really well. Obviously, angling the burner on a forge with two
> open ends will not do a guy much good, but where the back is closed,
> it seems to do the trick really well.
>
> Of course, I still have virtually zero experience with the total
> blacksmithing experience- so if I do find that there is a problem with
> what I've got set up for whatever reason later on, I'll take back the
> statements above cheerfully. But if it works as well as it apparently
> does, I figure it can't hurt to share this minor modification (which
> may already be common knowledge, as far as I know!)
>
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