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Anybody using acetylene regulators with any luck?
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Zoeller Burner Huffing
- Thread starter cjweaver13
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Anybody using acetylene regulators with any luck?
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- Jun 19, 2018
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Thanks all for the help. Ended up being a bad regulator. Runs beautiful now. Still put a choke on and adjusted nozzle height and we're in the ballpark. Hammered on some steel tonight for the first time felt good
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If I'm following your question correctly, if the flare is too deep in the forge, or the opening for the burner to close to the flare, it will heat up. At least that has been my experience with my home-brewed gas forges.
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I know you already got it resolved, but wanted to post some helpful info anyway, in case you want to further fine tune it. I think 1, III, and S are relative. Use the calculator linked at the bottom to determine your BTU and aim for 450 BTU per cubic inch of forge chamber.
I'm on a number of forums on other media, and kept answering the same questions primarily because those forums didn't have the Shop Talk education that we have here. Most questions boiled down to a lack of understanding why forges and burners work. They simply copied what they saw on a youtube video or someone's (inaccurate) rehash of Ron Reil's page. Still, it took me like 10 minutes to type all this out, and it condenses hundreds of threads on here. Hopefully, the information is up to normal Shop Talk standards.
Thought I would save some time and post this. Let me tell you what's wrong with your knifemaking forge, before you post your video:
11. Blacksmithing and knifemaking, despite their similarities, have very different requirements for heat control, steel type, flux use, etc.
1. Burner's don't need flares in a forge, the chamber will sufficiently act as a flare. Try it, you'll see.
2. Your burner is too far into the chamber. The tip should not be visible in the chamber.
III. Your burner is too long. The tube should be 6-8" in length.
R. Your forge is starving for oxygen. Your burner holder(port) should be about 50% bigger than the burner tube and should NOT be stuffed with kaowool. This will allow it to get more air and burn hotter.
3. You only need 100k BTU for a propane tank forge, why do you have two or three burners?
4. Forced air does NOT use less gas than venturi or ribbon burners.
5. Coat your kaowool with something, uncoated kaowool is extremely bad for your lungs and it gets damaged quicker.
6. 1/8" coating on your kaowool is plenty, you don't need 3/4". Refractory has little insulation value, it's just protecting your lungs and the wool.
7. Those are hard firebricks. They have very little insulation value. You want to be using soft insulating firebricks.
8. A 55 gallon barrel is a bit big for a propane forge.
Q. A straight down flame is OK for blacksmithing, but knifemaking works better with an angled burner that creates a swirling chamber.
S. Burners should be measured in BTU, not inches. 3/4" or 1" is meaningless with regards to BTU output. A BTU calculator is linked here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11obg0EGWLE94tXqIN0zbjtKiargXJGMBB6uSr5H5sJY/edit?usp=sharing
12. Just because you saw someone do it that way on a YouTube video doesn't make it the only way, or even the best way. My way isn't the only way. But I have spent hundreds of hours testing different designs. I have sold over 1500 forges and 2000 burners and I'm just trying to help share my time and knowledge so you can accel in this hobby(Like Stacy did for most of us).
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This is great thank you. Timing is actually great because while I wait for soft brick to arrive I set up a small hard brick forge with burner mounted on too using a floor flange just for the time being. My next question would be best burner set; top mount or side angled so it answers that as well. Just for kicks here she is running enough to get me by for a few more days.
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This one is another of the "it depends" bits. Blown burners are definitely more efficient across a larger spectrum of settings. I can run a blown burner across a wider array of settings at maximal efficiency as I can precisely control the mixture at any gas flow rate that my air supply allows for. With a venturi burner, geometric adjustments are required to adjust mixture (orifice diameter, venturi port size, location of orifice). As such, a venturi requires a greater level of tuning and is far more sensitive to local air movement. If you live in a windy area, a venturi will be less efficient as changing wind conditions (gusts, changes in wind direction, etc.) will alter mixture.
the forced air bower is almost exactly analogous to an electrically driven supercharger. It allows precise independent metering of both fuel and oxidizer, rather than making oxidizer flow rate a contingent variable (one that is contingent on a large number of variables, only two of which - fuel flow rate and choke setting - that you have immediate control of. And just like a supercharger in an internal combustion engine it but normalizes performance at altitude and and allows for a much higher heat energy release.
The limit to the amount of heat a blown burner can generate is either the max molar flow rate of the oxidizer or the fuel, whichever is (relatively) lower. For a large propane tank, this is almost assuredly the oxidizer flow rate. If you couple a large blower with a big propane tank, you will easily be able to generate more heat than any forge can sustain in the long term. You can get nearly complete internal combustion of a sufficient quantity of gas that despite the lack of any meaningful external combustion, you still cant stand/get near the forge. Now this isn't a particularly useful quality to have at the extreme, but it does mean that up until you reach the operating limits of your forge (and your arms' heat tolerance) you can run the blower to a very high heat output. While you could design a venturi burner that can do that, it wouldn't really run at the lower end of the range as well (and would require a very high pressure regulator).
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For a rectangular profile firebox, I prefer an overhead burner. You can angle the burner, but I find it doesn't really even out the heat it just moves the hot spots. I would avoid a side burner unless you go with a rounded interior profile. without the rounded profile, an angled burner doesn't really provide (in my experience) the helical exhaust path that guys like for its more even heat distribution.
I don't HT in a forge, and my main forge has a big rectangular chamber, so I like the overhead design better for the localization of heat (I do a lot of blacksmithing too) as I can still heat a very large section of blade. For a dedicated knife making forge, a cylindrical chamber and an angled burner is probably your best bet, but the way I have made these, such profiles require a lot more precise welding of burner clamps. And if you are going to use IFB in lieu of inswool to design such a forge, I am not quite sure of the best way to design it.
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Not hard to see where that came from.... tuning burners outside the forge.
It makes sense, until it doesn't.
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
ilmarinen - MODERATOR
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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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I merely grind the inside of the burner tube to chamfer it.
I find it more important to make sure the hole through the refractory is smooth and enlarging ( flared) as it enters the chamber. Sharp corners and rough surfaces make turbulence.
I find it more important to make sure the hole through the refractory is smooth and enlarging ( flared) as it enters the chamber. Sharp corners and rough surfaces make turbulence.