How long one tank last depends on what you use it for. If you do alot of forge welding then one tank wont last as long as if you just forge.

I hate to be the nerd but it's a volumetric equation to determine the amount of time usage per tank. I'll spare the details but essentially a single burner at 8 psi will go through a 5gal tank with about 8 hrs of continuous use. Which means the question becomes how many heats can you get in that time? Propane is more efficient at keeping heat and transferring it to the metal so you'll get more heats per hour from propane than coal or charcoal. After that the question becomes, how skilled are you at moving hot metal? A pro is going to do more with one heat than a novice can. Which means the second part of your question can only be answered by you. Hope that helps 🤣

Pete's Creative Recycling until you need to change refractory. Then you realise it's a tin can with refractory in it.

@@dylanzrim1011 yeah... but by that time I made enough money for a real forge. If I didn't, I would have just made another one. I used it for a whole year and it's still good and works fine years later. Really, you should outgrow the thing before you wear it out.

Did you forge the knives you made? Or did you just use it to heat treat? I'm considering building a forge similar to the one you described but I wasn't too be able to forge in it.

exactly what I am doing now. how did it work for you? still using it? any tips?

Lol

elindred mostly heat treat/temper. Rather slow, and not very precise for other work.

I was hoping he would cover ribbon burners too. Hope he does at some time

It just distributes the heat more evenly than 1 or 2 burners so you can heat pieces better in an equal temp, for the rest its just the same as a normal burner.

What are you using for insulation? Round forges in generally are a little easier to construct. Here is a burner I made.. there is some good footage of it burning away: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iaeAa7uZ1MWtZqs.html

I've heard ITC 213ht is one of the best coatings for the metal or painted metal. May be something you could check out. Best of luck and blessed days, Crawford out

Check out the Atlas mini-forge... The thing is a beast and perfect for knifemaking.

Fairly old post but for the sake of others you can buy a ridgidizer spray which you use during the build. I have the materials but not got round to the build yet....

This.

If you haven't bought one yet... check out the Atlas mini forge! That thing is a great value.

Larry Zoleller (zoellerforge.com/), has a lot of designs and sells his stuff. if you have a local furnace/firebrick place you can get kaowool (ceramic fire blanket), or you can order off of ebay/amazon. There's a new fire blanket out that you don't have to coat, can't remember what it's called, but it doesn't metastasize in your lungs, and costs about the same as kaowool. You can make your own refractory cement - water down furnace cement (available at Menard's, Tractor Supply, and most places that sell furnace duct) to the consistency of plaster of Paris and combine with Perlite (not vermiculite).

Can also look up on YT burners that are assembled out of black iron pipe fittings and use a specific MIG welding gun contact tip for the gas orifice. No welding even needed I think.

No, you'd still use fire brick for the floor bringing it up to the front opening. He's just saying in the vertical forge the floor brick is easier to replace.

If you don't, you'll probably be breathing microscopic ceramic particles as it gradually breaks off during use, which is very bad for your lungs. Also the lining won't last as long.

If you mix refectory cement a thin layer is enough to keep the hot flowing gas off the wool. If you don't seal it, wear a respirator. Probably should wear one either way, but definitely if you don't seal your ceramic wool. Those fibers do the exact same thing asbestos does in your lungs and permanently damage your lungs and can give you all sorts of cancer over the years.

Satanite Refractory Mortar, it make a paste that you kinda slather on, then you gota dry it out into the candy shell :)

jeffrey barnes-allan ridigizer

Farrier ... as in Horseshoes and Trimming for equine industry... I knew you knew. Right ?

I'd say good to go start messing around. I think the major limitation is having to open the forge from the side with a ferrier forge? And losing some heat in the process.

If you have 2 openings, then you can make things that are longer than the chamber; if you make something that isn't longer than the chamber, you can block the other side so it retains heat better.

Guido Ooms I've always heard that without water glass to like, seal the concrete and give a heat resistant binding agent to hold the concrete together under the high heat of a forge. without this taken into consideration, the concrete will tend to crumble and breakdown sooner and thus need replacement sooner. I've also heard of using like perlite in the concrete mixture not so much to stretch it out, but to add air pockets and increase its refractory ability. since air is a very good insulator.

Thank you for your reply. The crumbling makes sense... I might have some water glass here so I will just soak the inside with it and see what happens.

At least 0 to 30 psi.

That would be dependent upon the temperature requirements for the work based on burner construction and position and if its venturi style or forced air whether direct applications or ribbon burner style. Venturi style seem to operate from 12 to 25psi from what I've read. Direct forces air seem to operate from 5 to 10psi. Ribbon burners seem to operate from 2 to 8 psi from what I've learned. Of course these are generalizations of what I've learned and do very widely dependent on the forge shape construction and materials plus altitude one operates and the ambient temps during operation. All of these things are subjective and I'm pretty sure that's why nobody gives like exact settings, however I think these generalizations can be as useful as starting points. Best of luck and blessed days sirSir, Crawford out

I run my venturi @ 3-5 psi and my forced air burner @ 0.5psi +

Someone may have more known factors and true numbers than I. That said the btu's from natural gas are to some extent lower than that of propane. As such it is necessary to use more natural gas to produce the same temperature in a forge/ foundry. I guess the basic answer is yes qualified by it will take more natural gas to produce the same results. Blast of luck and blessed days sirSir, Crawford out

I've considered tapping into my natural gas line in order to do a similar situation. though I have no own doubts and concerns about messing around with the already older gas plumbing in this old house. plus it's a rental....

@@johnnymartin2970 , thanks brother. I had forgotten about the low line pressure for household natural gas. Great catch there sirSir awesome that someone else can pick up the game and share info. Blessed days sirSir, Crawford out

nice little write up. good job.

Pyro I have been to propane BLEVE scenes A one pound single use propane tank Bleve will move a house off its foundations a house full of propane the explodes with reduce the fire house to kindling and there will be structural members (studs) penetrating exterior walls as far as 100 meters from ground zero. Been there seen that so there is no question retired firefighter. Now having stated that I will state if proper precautions such as using only in a well ventilated shop and avoiding any possibility of direct heat transfer from the forge to the wall of the propane cylinder supplying the propane to the forge's burners. Then there is little that can go wrong especially if the burners are first test fired outside and the forge is fire and gets its first heat outside. Now the forge working area needs to be a safe distance from anything flammable a good rule of thumb if you can hold your hand next to the closest flammable object and you cannot hold it there for any length of time without discomfort is to close. Any type fuel container should be kept outside of the forges working area in a separate room at the very least. This is not to criticize only to offer some helpful advice.

@@retiredarthritic2083 Well, if you for some reason end up with a BLEVE situation, you should have noticed something was wrong long before you got to that point, for example, that your house was ablaze or that someone had placed your gas tank in your lit forge. You know, you don't go from gas being kept in a perfectly safe manner, to BLEVE. Hopefully, no one is dumb enough to store their gas where it can reach a critical temperature. Again, I'm not saying gas can't be dangerous, we all know it can, but I've seen what it takes to blow up an entire neighborhood, in a very literal sense of the expression, because that's exactly what happened where I live, several years ago. You probably already heard of the disaster, but in case you haven't there's a bit in English here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seest_fireworks_disaster That is what I think of when someone says "blowing up the neighborhood", I don't consider a gas canister like the one shown @ 2:08 to be even remotely capable of "blowing up the neighborhood", simply because it isn't. And don't worry, I didn't take your comment as a critique, obviously we both have a certain level of education and experience in this field, although from two totally opposite sides. I did learn a bit about firefighting though when I got my pyro license, I passed my exam at the same training facility our firefighters use for some of their training, and was surprised when I talked to one of them and learned that they weren't taught anything about how to handle fire in pyrotechnical compounds - the trick is to evacuate, you can't suffocate it, you can't cool it fast enough, and you can't separate the fuel. From a pyrotechnician's standpoint, something as simple as black powder must be the firefighter's worst nightmare - it'll happily burn under water, and provided the temperature is high enough it'll just as happily ignite all at once without an open flame, despite being one of the safest compounds we work with. But I digress. Yes, obviously one should always make sure one is working in a safe environment, or "as safe as possible" in our cases, being a firefighter or a pyrotechnician comes with some inherent risks, I've had my close calls, though not through any fault of my own. But I think people, in general, would be fine when setting up a gas forge, as long as they just employ common sense, and make sure they don't have a gas leak, that's what I'd worry about the most, and I'm currently in the process of setting up a gas forge.

By someone saying hey, I love this guys work but I really don't have the time, patients or skills to make my own. Maybe I'll just buy one of his knives. Advertising is always good.

Gary Rose truer words have never been spoken there is not a day that goes buy where one cannot learn something new.