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Ed Caffrey's Workshop Talk to Ed Caffrey ... The Montana Bladesmith! Tips, tricks and more from an ABS Mastersmith.

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  #1  
Old 03-20-2008, 09:28 PM
doublearrow doublearrow is offline
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first time firing the forge

Here's some pics of me firing my forge for the first time just long enough to grab some pics. I haven't done it yet but most likely I'm going to downsize the 1.5" pipe down to 1" from some advice I was given from here on the forums. I did however get rid of the leaf blower and used a shaded pole blower. As always any advice or comments are appreciated. edited to add those aren't the openings I do have insulated caps to go on the ends with one small opening in one of the ends.




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Old 03-20-2008, 10:32 PM
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Nice, got a good vortex going. HAve you gotten it really hot yet??? Or have you tried to run it at say HT temps (1500). These will be the tell all about the forge. If the mixture is wrong you will get blowbacks. That is were the 1" tube may give you better performance. there is always a BUT in the crowd though. Wayne Goddard uses a straight 2" dia pipe with an elbow from the blower to the forge. He can get welding temps in about 5 minutes. I do not know of any problems he has had. I have modified my 2" blower tube and put a mixer in it. This creates a vortex before the air fuel mixture hits the inside of the forge. It gives you much greater control even at lower temperatures. I have 2 types that I make. The one I have on the Forge is a series of SS tubes stacked inside the 2" pipe. I essentially creates a bunch of smaller blower tubes and restricts the flow to provide the required back pressure to keep it from burning back into the tube. The next one that i have used is a piece of 20ga SS cut to fit into the tube and then cut into an X. These do not come quite to the center and then just bend them up to create fins. I like them both. BUT as we all have them use what works for you. A 1" tube may work fine and give you the control you need. Keep up the good work..


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Old 03-21-2008, 08:33 AM
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Now that is BEAUTIFUL!!

You nailed the burner placement!


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Old 03-21-2008, 10:09 AM
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Well Woodchuck I haven't gotten it up to temp yet. Yesterday I just fired it up for maybe a minute to help cure the satanite. If I think it's dry enough this afternoon I"m going to put my ITC over and finish up my end caps. I'll let that dry before I get to really rolling with it. That picture there was taken with the gate vavle on the controller barely open and running about a pound of pressure on my propane tank. The needle valve also wasn't fully open so I'm thinking I still have alot of room to do some adjusting when I actually figure out what I'm doing. Thanks to ya'lls advice I'm knocking the learning curve way down. Thanks again for the help and comments.


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Old 03-21-2008, 11:37 AM
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Good looking burn in there.Nice job.


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Old 03-21-2008, 02:28 PM
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Is the forge of your own design? That looks great! Let us know how it goes as you start to heat up some steel in that bad boy!
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Old 03-21-2008, 02:41 PM
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No definitly not of my own design I looked at alot of pictures on the forums. I based it off of Indian George's tutorial and used Ray Rogers' site. From there Woodchuck Forge and others offered some advice on where to go from there. Thanks for the compliment.


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Old 03-22-2008, 05:59 PM
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Well I finally got the itc coat on and the end caps built I fired it up at 5 psi till it got going. From there I knocked it down to 2 psi. It was the brightest orange I have ever seen #### near white, but I have not bought a pyrometer yet to see how hot it actually is. I did stick an old file I had into it just for craps and laughs and it fell in two pieces when I picked it up with some pliers. It wasn't melted though so I don't know what that's all about I'll have to do some research. I have a piece of railroad track cut into anvil form at work I just haven't brought it home yet. I did set the piece on the I beam I had and it didn't move a whole lot but the I beam was boucing all over.
I appreciate ya'lls help, but my wife might not. Knifemaking took up enough time this forging thing I think is gonna be like a crack addiction.


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Old 03-22-2008, 11:38 PM
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I've been reading up on oxidizing, neutral atmospheres and what not but does anyone have any pictures? Today when I fired it up I could get the steel bright yellow and it scaled up pretty bad so I'm guessing this is the oxidizing atmosphere. I understand what neutral is I just was wondering if someone had pictures to go along with an explanation. Thanks


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Old 03-23-2008, 08:25 AM
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Adjust your air fuel mix so you can see SOME yellow flame coming out the front of the forge. This is a reducing flame. Neutral is very hard to maintain and oxidizing is not wanted at all. So most go with a slightly reducing. If you are scaling up bad inside the forge then the mix needs to be a little richer. It will scale when the blade is removed but not too bad.


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Old 03-23-2008, 08:26 AM
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I don't have any photos, but will try to describe it for you.

When the forge is running, you adjust the air and fuel flows until you have a flame of approx. 4-6" coming out of the front opening (I'm assuming you have the back closed up, and a port in the front for access?) The trick is to balance the air and fuel so that you have a slight excess of fuel going into the forge. The flame coming out the opening is the fuel that has no oxygen to consume inside the forge chamber, so essentially its coming outside to acquire oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere for combustion. If theres no free oxygen inside the forge chamber, then it can't join with your steel to create scale.

There will always be SOME scale, thats just the nature of the beast, but if the forge is tuned correctly, it should be minimal.

Now, a couple of side notes to that: If you cannot achieve a neutral/fuel rich environment inside the forge by adjusting the fuel and blower outputs, then you may have to look at blower size/cfm, and/or if you have an orifice in the gas line, you may have to adjust its size. The size of the forge, CFM of the blower, and the fuel orifice size are the three critical keys to balancing things out. Sometimes it takes a little playing around, but you'll get it working! Gas forges are also sensitive to weather conditions, especially here (Montana) in the higher elevations........on cloudy/rainy/snowy days my forges will run almost out of control due to the denser air on those days. When its "blue bird" skies and warm, I sometimes struggle to achieve the temps I want.


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Old 03-23-2008, 08:25 PM
doublearrow doublearrow is offline
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I appreciate the help guys.


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