Thread: My First Forge

Originally Posted by spazola

It looks good to me. Maybe try angling the burner so it is tangent to the interior wall. A flame that spins around heats more evenly than a flame that hits 90 into the far wall. I like your forge I have had one like at one time, looks like fun.

Charlie

I tried to make that happen, but had a hard time keeping the pipe in position. It does not go directly at the oppisite wall, it has a slight down/back angle so its more aimed at the rear corner. Further adjustments will probably damage the lining. I mostly want to just practice with this one for a bit while perfecting the design I am working on for the real forge. Scrap steel, and a scrap forge, before I start burning up expensive bits of O2 and A2

Yea, just don't stare into the forge. I started using some shade 3.0 glasses w/ my coal burner.

fart joke...reminds me of this scene in the Lion King.

Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?

Timon: Pumbaa, I don't wonder; I know.

Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?

Timon: They're fireflies. Fireflies that, uh... got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.

Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.

Timon: Pumbaa, with you, everything's gas.

Well I was beginning to wonder if you blew yourself up. It has been awhile since you posted back. But then I started thinking you were smart enough to feed all those beans to the dog and keep him outside a few days. I did have a drawing going of a natural gas hook up for your forge but I thought the actual picture of the inlet side might get me banned. It would not have worked anyway because I don't think you could have reached around and pulled the blank out without burning your butt. Although it would have been a very mobile forge with only 2 legs :<0)

So that's just propane and it gets hot enough to make a forge? Could you use natural gas from the house gas line? This is really interesting. So I just need a propane torch and a can and some insulation and I can forge a razor? I wanna play too!!!

I think the problem with natural gas from your house is that it only comes out at about 4 psi. max. This is what keeps me from experimenting with it.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

I think the problem with natural gas from your house is that it only comes out at about 4 psi. max. This is what keeps me from experimenting with it.

Is alot lower than 4PSI. is 22 millibar after the meter/ 7 in.H2o, or 0.18 PSI

Yes. And there are good reasons of course. For home use, low pressure suffices. This in turn means thinner piping, lighter joints, etc. And of course, in case of accidents, the pressure makes a difference too. If you want to use the natural gas ciruit, you have to get the gas company to install a high pressure circuit.

The handful of Belgian smiths I know use bottled gas for that reason.

Actually with natural gas,pressure has almost nothing to do with BTU output,Is all about Volumne of gas.

We had a huge viking stove installed in our last house,the had to increase the pipe size from 1 to 2 in..

There are less BTUs per volume in natural gas than there are in propane. Most line pressures are much higher than the normal homeowner will be allowed to use. Furnaces, hot water heaters, stoves and so on are regulated to 4 inches of water column pressure, pretty low.

I had to teach my gas man what a high pressure LP circuit was used for in my shop. He was used to feeding gas to a couple other blacksmiths. Once he understood then we up engineered the pipes and regulators to accommodate my needs.

I run venturi burners. For the most part the stuff I do requires higher than normal pressures; higher than generally discussed even in the blacksmith forums, to get these burners to run effectively where I want them to. Every time I've been asked to check out why someone's venturi forge is not working the correction is first and last the input pressure followed by orifice size against air entrainment.

You can run a forge off natural gas. I would start with at least a two or two and half inch feed pipe with a simple valve and line pressure (no regulator) and adjust from there. I know a forge in San Francisco that runs this way and it's a big operation. To them natural gas is the cheapest way to go. It can be done. You might scare the local neighborhood gas man though.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Actually with natural gas,pressure has almost nothing to do with BTU output,Is all about Volumne of gas.

We had a huge viking stove installed in our last house,the had to increase the pipe size from 1 to 2 in..

If you have the ability to install way bigger piping, and the supply is such that it can maintain pressure in those pipes, you're good to go. But bigger piping only works if you can maintain supply pressure. If you can't, then bigger piping is not going to increase flow. Flow is what you need. With regular piping, this means increasing pressure.