New Forge!

[HHH Knives]

Well, This is our third forge. and a dedicated super duper welding deluxe WELDING forge! Both of the other forges we have are atmospheric set ups and have served us well. The last one was a little rocket and worked great.. But we are wanting to start working with stainless and making some stainless damascus and stainless clad billets etc, etc. and needed to upgrade to a forced air forge!

After a full day of fabrication and weeks of preparation we fired it up for the first time today and tested it out.. Welded a 30+ layer stack. Im a happy knife maker!! Now Randy Jr. can start making us some EVEN cooler stuff to play with!


Anyways heres a few pics of the forge and the first weld!! Yea, I know most people take pics of the children and stuff like that.. I take pics of steel nd forges and sparks flying! lol Its a KNIFE LIFE!

Randy

 

[Archer Moon]

What are you using for the air supply? I would like to see pics of the whole thing! Looks about like mine. I do like the cart you have it on.

 

[HHH Knives]

Im using a 1 HP blower as my air supply. Hard wired with PVC to the intake. It sets on the bottom shelf..

 

[McClellan Made Blades]

Randy ,
How big is your door? And did you do the same for the back? When I built mine I had a time getting it to tune with the doors on (they are 4"), I had to take the doors off, and it runs great, also what size is your burner? I am so
indebted to Ed Caffrey, he held my hand through me building mine, gave me the confidence that I wouldn't blow myself up! I went with a 1"burner tube, but got to thinking about putting a smaller nipple on it, to see if it would increase the heat, I finally got a pyrometer so I'll know how hot it's running, and I think I have it wired well enough to
drill another hole for it to sit in. I recently went back and fixed some errors of my design, I just didn't listen to everything I read, or I thought that what I had in mind would work better, I was so wrong, I fixed that, and it's running pretty good, haven't tried it with the doors on yet, I might give them a shot since I fixed some of the other problems. Thanks for sharing, it looks great! Rex

 

[HHH Knives]

Rex, Yea. the doors are not a problem on ours. I ran a 3/4 inch burner. and the doors are 4+ inches across and 3+ inches high. Front and back.

I used the Zowada style burner.. Which I modified from the original plans. But same basic concept.

Ed is a good guy, and has helped a bunch of folks in getting set up. myself included.

Will be interesting to hear if a smaller burner works for ya. I dont have a pyrometer on this forge. But can say without a doubt its hotter then any of our other forges.. MUCH HOTTER!!!

God Bless YA!
Randy

 

[McClellan Made Blades]

I've been sick as a dog for going on 2 weeks now, when the cabin fever got stronger than the pneumonia fever I would go out for a few minutes and tinker around a bit, what I call piddling. After I got the refractory on and dried fairly well, I fired it to see what the burner was going to look like, same size burner as it was before, the sound was
greatly lessened, the fire itself didn't seem as forceful as it did before, coming out of the burner I couldn't tune it to a blue flame, BUT! I do have a beautiful swirling fire, I may try the smaller burner, it will be reducing it down from 1" to I think about a 1/2", it seems like it should increase the pressure, I think. If not it's back to the drawing board, I think I will see how well it works with the doors on to see what kinds of temps I can get, then if needed make the change to the smaller burner. I still need to get a hole drilled for the Pyrometer to enter the chamber. And still have a lot of site clean up to do on the house we're having built, too much to do and really aint feelin it!!! We'll see how well I fair in a couple of hours, y'all be good, Rex

 

[HHH Knives]

I may be wrong here, But rather then going down on your burner size you may need to go up on your air pressure? I know. That just complicates matters further! lol


Good luck and I sure hope you start feeling better.
God Bless YA
Randy