Galvinized metal in homemade forge.

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Danimal6513

Joined
Apr 16, 2013
Messages
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I'm starting my homemade grill forge soon, and i have a large pipe that's just beel laying around my backyard and i want to use it for my air intake (sorry i forgot the technical term). It seems like some generic steel pipe. I have no idea if it's galvinized, so my question is, how do i check to see if it's galvinized, and is there a way to burn the galvinization off? I've read a couple things that mentioned that, but i don't know how legit it is. It's not worth getting sick.
 
If it is not or hardly rusted in the back yard, good indication that it's galvinized. Burn is high risk, filing/sand is safer (virtually no risk but you need also file/sand inside the pipe) ... however it's best to buy black steel pipe from your local lowe's or hd.
 
That stuff is so cheap its not worth messing with. Galvanized coating is HIGHLY toxic when it burns. Nasty stuff. As said above, just go buy some pipe from the local home improvement store.
 
Yeah, it's worth the very small price tag to get new ungalvanized pipe rather than mess with trying to burn off fumes. If you do get exposed to fumes from heated galvanizing and you start feeling sick, drink lots of milk and get to a hospital. The calcium is supposed to bind with the heavy metals in your body and keep them from doing quite as much damage.

One of my online blacksmithing mentors from back when I started smithing got killed from heavy metal poisoning after burning galvanizing off of pipe. He knew better, too. There's an entry on the iForge tutorials over on Anvilfire that talks about the incident.
 
Definitely just going to get some new pipe. -edit- I just read that article on anvilfire, and i'm glad you guys pointed me there because i had no idea how serious that stuff is. So I can get ungalvinized pipe from Lowe's? I was at home depot today and all they had was galvinized in the plumbing section. I didn't really look around though.
 
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Homedepot doesn't carries black pipe with diameter beyond 1 inch. I was at a local hd 2 days ago to buy a 4x1.5" schedule 40 black pipe nipple, for use as a forge burner holder. I will try Lowe's tomorrow (edit: scratch this, they don't carries in online, so no chance in retails). I see Grainger has it - item# 11X148 for less than five bucks.
 
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You're asking a lot from a city bix box store.

My TSC has various lengths of pipe up to 2 inch, maybe more.


Find a good plumber, or plumbing supply store *where the plumbers shop
and ask about cut off remainder lengths, they will have lots of stuff.
 
Oh, well, I'll post it one more time:

The fumes from welding/brazing/burning galvanized metal are not good to breath, but no fumes are good to breath.
The compound in the fumes is zinc oxide, which is not toxic. Metal Fume Fever is not fatal, despite what is posted over and over again.

Zinc poisoning is a different thing, and is a problem with animals. Human zinc poisoning is a very rare event.

That said, using black pipe is still a better idea.
 
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