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The Newbies Arena Are you new to knife making? Here is all the help you will need.

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Old 05-16-2009, 09:53 AM
D N D Boyd's Avatar
D N D Boyd D N D Boyd is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Hamilton Ontario
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Oil Burner for Forge???

Hay Guys, just wondering about an oil burner as a heat source for my forge. It is an older unit, my be late 70's early 80's. Its about 3' long, 2' high and 1' wide, with a 6" diameter pipe for the flame. My friend Gary said it was used to heat up his Dads 20' X 60' workshop and blows a 3-4' blue and orange flame. Of course 3-4' is an overkill, but I think it can be adjusted to a 1' flame. His dad used oil as a fuel, but Gary said he has used propane in it as well. We also what to forge swords as well, like Japanese and mid evil.

So I have a few questions. Is the burner usable? what would be a better fuel oil or propane?
3rd and final question, since Gary and I want to forge all types of swords and knives, do we have to make 2 forges out of fire brick? 1 for swords and 1 for knives?

Thanx for all your help.

Dave

P.S. I Love The 50 Dollar Knife Shop. And highly recommend it. Ive learned a tone of info on every page.


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Old 05-16-2009, 03:24 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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I don't know if what you have is suitable for forging or not because I can't see it. If you can get your steel into it and if it will reach the required temperatures then, yes, it is usable for forging. Unless you modify it though I suspect it will not be fuel efficient for forging since it was originally designed for heating a shop (by your description).

Gas or oil: it's all the same as long as you're happy with the cost and the efficiency of the forge you have. Both can potentially reach the required temps and both have been used successfully.

Two forges: yes, and no. Yes, if you intend to always heat up your entire sword blade in a long forge, then you would probably like to have a second smaller forge for knives just to save on fuel and speed up the heating process. No, if you learn to forge swords like most smiths do using a small forge that is open at both ends and your blade passes through heating only the small section you are working on. Heating the whole blade is mostly pointless because most of it will cool off too much while you're working on one small section.

Fire brick? Not just NO but HELL NO! Unless you have some very specific reason to do otherwise the only place fire brick should be is on the floor of your forge. The rest of the forge body should be ceramic wool or, in some cases, castable refractory cement. Building a whole forge from fire brick pretty much has to result in a square forge body and that is something you want to avoid like the plaque!

There is an entire encyclopedia of information on forge building on these forums. Before making any decisions about the forge you have or what (if anything) you may build you owe it to yourself to spend a week or so reviewing everything you can find on the subject with the Search key ....


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