Thread: Gas forge for heat treating?

Originally Posted by jfk742

Well ended up welding the burner to the body, hope that isn’t a no-no.

No, I think that is one of the main advantages of having a steel shell.

Edit; Thinking about it for a second, I guess most people weld in a receiver tube that holds the burner. That way the burner can be easily removed. Once every thing is working there is little reason to pull the burner though. I have cleaned the jet on mine a couple of times. There is a lot of crap in commercial propane. Most designs have pretty easy access to the jet without removing the burner.

I like the idea of welding a coupling to the body and using that to hold the burner so you are able to remove or adjust the burner.

The late John White had a small version of the Don Fogg style drum HT forge. It would hold temperature to within a few degrees. Pretty amazing. But, he has a small venturi burner and a pretty accurate thermocouple setup so it wa a big more purpose built than say the old one brick forge. Point being that you can do it, but make sure that you do it the best that you can afford. I used to HT with a black iron muffle pipe in my Chile Forge with the smaller 1/2 burner. It worked pretty well, but I still ended up buying an oven.

It dawned on me that I should of welded a tube on with a spider chuck after the fact, I’ll do that on the small forge for more adjustment. I used a .03 mig tip which is adjustable in and out, need to make some chokes still though.

I did end up purchasing a thermocouple, wasn’t the most expensive but wasn’t the cheapest either. I figure it’s probably way better than what evenheat or paragon use in their hobby setups. As I’m only planning on using W2, 1095, and possibly O2 I don’t have any needs for an elaborate heat treating program that would require an oven.

spider chuck

My new words for the day.

I had a buddy in High School....Spider Chuck!

Well got her going today, held temp just fine, but the burner is not working well or correctly. The flame is burning when it hits the front of the oven and not when it comes out of the burner nozzle. The mig tip isn’t entering the tube at the center off about an 1/8”, definitely not helping things but not sure if that’s the only reason, I guess I need to try some different sizes too. I tried adjusting the tip fore and aft but that had little effect. At really low pressure it burns right at the end of the burner. I also played with some different choke settings with no difference in where the burn was occurring.



With the pressure up, combustion is happening at the front under the muffle:


With the pressure turned way down, couldn’t hold temp, losing about a degree every 15 seconds at around 1475.

I cannot tell where the burner goes in?

First picture, the black pipe at the bottom on the left. The one above it is for the thermocouple.

Thought so....Should it not come in from the back top-middle side at a tiny angle toward the front?
Makes the heat go round and round?