Hot steel!

Yay! We've got hot steel! This is a shot of a piece of 1 1/4 angle iron on it's 2nd or 3rd trip into the forge. The reheat from it becoming non-plastic to nice and red hot is a couple of minutes at this point. This is 30 - 45 minutes into the first firing.

Work on the forget today started out fitting the lid bricks. I made a 30 degree ramp out of some wafer wood to hold the bricks at the right angle on the tile saw. This tile saw does 90 & 45 degrees only. So I needed something to angle the bricks since the blade could not be set at 30 degrees. About 50 cuts later I had a roof on the forge.

At that point I used a grit edge 2 inch hole saw to bore the burner hole in the side of the forge. The bricks are not grouted in at this point. A piece of wood  was used to back up the brick so the hole saw could push through. Once the hole was bored a bar clamp was used to provide a temporary support for the burner. A vise grip clamp held the burner against the bar clamp. After all the propane was hooked up it was time to fire it up.

Lighting is was a pain in the ass. I used a long propane lighter. It kept going out when I put it in the forge. Either too much gas or something. Only once did I get a small blow out and singed a little bit of arm hair. I did not want to stick burning paper in there because I did not want hot burning paper flying out.

Got it lit. After a couple of flame outs I got the balance of fuel PSI and the opening in front of the forge close. It was darn close to a reduction flame. With two burners it will need a bigger opening. Some of the more successful furnaces I have seen have a chimney.

Temperatures - I've been concerned that the generic fire brick I used was going to be too conductive of heat. It's right on the the edge. The outside temps at peak ran from 80 degrees to 300 +/-. Nothing I could find was over 300. Ok ... so?

Lets put this in perspective. My ceramics kiln will be 1600 - 1700 degrees and the outside will be no more than 250 degrees. I don't have enough experience with this one to see what the outside temp will be as we approach 2000 degrees, but it's going to be a hell of a lot more than 300 degrees. Long term, the fire brick is not going to work. Further it may even vitrify. If so I'll have a pile of really hot glass on my hands.

Next is the question of how to come up with a decent refractory compound that I can get the materials for. There are many formulas. The trick is getting the materials. If getting the materials is too resource intensive then the castables that can be purchased are more cost effective. I would like to over come this because the castable mixes are not cheap. This forge would have cost me $200.00 in castable refractory.

The argument, which I agree with, is that the fuel cost savings make up for the investment many times over. My objective was to simply get a working box of bricks with fire inside at the lowest cost possible. Once I get the 2nd burner in there and working, mission accomplished.

So anyway ... it works and I managed to bend some steel.

Thanks to Teri and Hayley for standing by with the phone, ready to call 911! Fortunately, no problems. Knock on wood!

Oh, forgot to mention the steam. Due to the saw cutting several of the bricks had a good bit of water in them. They steamed off a good bit. I was getting a little concerned. Then I figure these have already been fired. The water got in there via open paths so the steam could follow that paths back out. Fortunately that worked out.