New Forge Coming To Life

69_knives

69_knives

Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
1,855
Got the interior refractory rammed on Tuesday and had the forge drying in a 120 degree boiler room for 4 days.

Today I built the exterior shell from sheet metal of sorts, actually I didn't feel like spending money on the shell other than the insulation, so I made it out of something I had in abundance; steel paint pails. There was a lot of hacking and riveting but I got'er done. When the shell was finished, I used strips of metal to rivet one end to the core and then mixed up some 1:5 ratio refractory cement : perlite and lightly rammed that between the core and the shell.

Right now I am cycling the heat on and off to heat it up and calcine the core.. I made a couple plugs from cement and a coffee can form to keep the heat evenly inside while calcining.

Overall dimensions are 15.5" long and 14.25" diameter.

Piccies.

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Thanks for looking.

Steve
 
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That's pretty spiffy.... how are you adjusting gas flow? A guage will help you do things a bit more consistent.
 
Will Leavitt said:
That's pretty spiffy.... how are you adjusting gas flow? A guage will help you do things a bit more consistent.
Click to expand...

If you mean pressure, I use one of these...

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Actual flow is just the open/close valve and #60 hole in the jet tube.

I forgot to add that I won a PID controller off ebay last week and will be setting it up to run off that at some point.
 
If plan to run it off a PID, change the burner to a blown burner.

That is a nice and robust forge. Some archaeologist in the 27th century will find it in the scrap piles and try to figure out what it was used for on a car?

Put a good coating of ITC-100 on the inside once the refractory is cured. That will help a lot.

Good job.
Stacy
 
I had the inside glowing for a couple of hours and the hottest the outside got was 145 F. I was able to shut it off and pick it up with bare hands to take it inside. Funny thing is it actually got hotter while it was sitting on the floor inside. I'm going to go with the 40 degree difference in ambient temp from outside being the reason for that.

I was going to put a layer of Satanite for durability first and because I don't think I really need a 6" chamber and then ITC-100 on top of the Satanite.

Yes, I'm sure they will ponder over it's purpose centries from now, maybe even millenia. :)
 
I have had the forge going for about 8 hours today and it looks like the insulation is working well.

Directly outside of the hot spot, where I made the insulation the thickest, the surface wouldn't go above 165 F and the hottest spot was a 1"x6" strip on the very top that ranged between 200 F - 210 F. Can't wait to see what it does when I apply the ITC-100. :)

I moved the burner so it would sit properly in the stand, looks better too.

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I cured a couple of coats of Satanite this weekend and in the mean time I bodged together the blower, air valve, air duct and oil tank. Like I said, it is bodged together but I did manage to get it to burn some oil as I found it difficult to get that far and not try it out.

I picked up an automotive heater blower at a garage sale for a couple of bucks last year. I'm not even sure what I bought it for. I had to fashion the cover and outlet from a coffee can and a piece of ABS pipe and the power supply is the etcher I built but I have a little 12V power supply that I will use instead.

The oil tank is also a coffee can that I soldered a piece of copper pipe into and used a needle valve and a piece of brake line to finish it off.

I didn't take any pics but I did grab a silly video of it working on propane... http://www.dailymotion.com/user/xXs..._progress-of-oil-burning-forge-still_creation
 
I got the forge more or less running on waste oil today and thought I'd update this in case anyone was interested :).

The oil tubing needs to be reworked because the oil isn't being heated enough to vaporize before entering the forge. There's that and the distinct possibility that the really small diameter tube is too small. I will fill the current oil line hole and then use a larger diameter tubing, make the entry point about 3" from the nozzle tip and wind the oil tube around the burner tube about 1.5". I think that should preheat the oil enough and give me enough volume to have a good, self sustaining burn.


This is the best I could get it to burn by itself...

 
Waste oil forges are such a great idea. I find any thread dealing with them very interesting. I am planning to build one as soon as I get back home this summer. Thanks for showing yours off, keep us posted when you get it tuned up real well. I wanna see a forge welding vid with it!
 
What a difference knowing your forging temperature makes.

My first firebrick forge I have to admit, probably only barely got the metal above critical, maybe a couple hundred degrees - now that I see how easy it is to move metal at the correct temperature. Wow! No more wailing on the steel to get it to move and having a hurthing hand for weeks after.

I seriously considered going to stock removal only and just using the forge only for HT for a couple of reasons. One, the above mentioned hurting hand and two that I have to tear every thing down and pack it all into my truck when I'm done.

This forge is a LOT lighter than the hard firebrick one so I don't mind having it in my truck and I timed how long it took to actually get it fired from the time I got to the shop and it was only 1/2 hour so it's not so bad. So, things are looking good for the forging.

Not to mention that it's burning really well on waste oil.

Due to the fact that the burner is designed as a propane burner, I don't think it will ever burn 100% oil, I do need to burn some propane but only to the point where the regulator pressure needle just comes off of the stopper.

It rained and snowed yesterday on and off and that seems to play havoc with the flame but it cleared up and I managed to get a fairly consistent burn.

The latest improvements are the PID for reading temperature and I added a box to hold the battery charger and PID to keep them dry and safe.

Enough blabbering, Here's some pics and a video...

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