Hi everyone- first thread here.
Over the next couple of months I'm not going to have a lot of shop time because my wife found us a new project: remodeling a 1978 Dodge RV. While I'm doing this, I'm going to use whatever shop time I have to do some shop projects I've put off- moving a workbench, new lights, and that sort of stuff. My big change is I'm switching from charcoal to propane. I'm going to build 2 forges: a vertical for general use and a horizontal one for heat treating. The vertical type I've built before, but the horizontal one will be a first for me. I've made a couple of blown burners but never a venturi type.
In one of Mr. Goddard's book (mine are loaned out and I don't remember which one it was) he showed a horizontal forge that looked kind of like a mailbox with burners that came up from below the forge on one side. Something like that is what I'm looking to build. Any information on how the burner was made, whose forge it was, or just general info on building horitzonal forges would be a HUGE help.
Thanks
Dave Armour
HI Dave, and welcome. I believe the mail box forge you are refering to is Devin Thomas's and if memory of the book serves me it was a three burner venturi with an opening at each end of the main pipe for air inlet and three fittings for gas plumbed in directly opposite where the three burner tubes appeared to be welded on a upsidedown three legged t configuration,sort of. I have two of Mr. Goddards books , but for the life of me I could not find the picture so again this is only from memory and may be inaccurate. I have been for the last 5 years or so using the burner designs layed out in Michael Porter's book " Gas Burners for forges,furnaces&kilns" with excellent results. My welding forge is a horizontal design with a 2 inch thick cast refractory wall coated with itc 100 surrounded by 2 inches of kaowool , the interior of this forge is 8" dia. by 24" long, 5" square openings on each end, this forge reaches 2500 degrees on a single 1.25" dia. venturi burner with a .052 gas orifice.this all sits in a square sheetmetal box. My regular forge is a small used water-well accumulator tank of really thin sheetmetal, about 6.5 interior dia. by 12 inches long heated with a single 3/4" venturi burner this also easily gets to welding heat but is sorta small inside. By all means I encourage everyone who is building their own forge to get this book, whole boatloads of useful, easy to understand material. Kinzea L Thompson
don't know if you need this anymore but i got this to help me build mine! David Robertson, copyright 2007
www.artistblacksmith.com it will show you how to build two forges.
