Couple new pics of my heat treat forge

[Wulf]

Here are a few pictures of a heat treat forge I built this summer. It uses the same forced air and propane burner assembly I use in my regular forge (I just move it back and forth between the two) but adjusted way down for pressure and flow. The chamber is over3 feet deep and insulated with fiber blanket sealed with satanite. There are 8 ports in the floor-mounted burner tube that allow for a nice even heat distribution within the chamber. This is aided further by the insboard shelf that runs the length of the chamber, which helps reflect and disburse the flames before they reach the subject.

I got the idea for this forge after talking to Burt Foster a while back, who had built a similar heat treat forge himself and achieved some great results with it.

So far I'm very impressed with this thing. It creates a very evenly distributed heat and allows me way more temperature and atmosphere control than my regular forge, so I can really dial it in and soak without fear of overheating certain sections of the blade. It ain't salt-pots, but it was inexpensive, easy to use, and has allowed me to improve my own heat treating methods considerably.

I still need to finish building the front door for this thing but other than that it's game on

 

[artificialj]

Cool, thanks for the pics. I was just thinking last night about asking people to post pics of heat treat forges to give me some ideas. Looks like this thing is well designed.

 

[Wulf]

OK one of my buddies just asked if I had any more pics and I dug up this picture of the burner tube from when I first tested it prior to welding it to the inside of the tank

It's basically just a steel pipe, I think about 1 1/2" OD that I plugged on the end and then drilled 8 quarter inch holes into all in a straight line, each about 3" apart. I flared the end of the tube ever so slightly over the horn of my anvil so it could more easily accept the tube from my main burner assembly. After that it was all about adjusting the airflow and gas pressure to get it properly dialed in.

Again, it was Burt Foster who initially inspired me to build this thing, but Burt's is way way cooler than mine. Still, I like it just fine