Gas Forge

I had a very interesting problem with my gas forge this past weekend. I started the forge as normal; as it was warming up I noticed the copper propane lines downstream from the regulator starting to freeze. The burner became very erratic, huffing and puffing; shooting yellow flames that exited the forge quite uncomfortably. Shut off the valve upstream from the regulator and the flame out continued! Getting larger! Reached over (getting hot now) and shut off the downstream valve feeding the burner. Still flaming! After about 45 seconds the burner shut off. What happened??? After sitting down for a few minutes, this is my theory: I have about 20 ft of ½ inch black iron pipe that plumbs the forge station to the propane tank with a valve also at the tank. The last time I used the forge and being in a hurry, I shut down the burner valve downstream from the regulator and failed to shut off the valve supplying the iron pipe at the tank. I think that the propane collected in the lines, condensed to a liquid and remained there, building up through temperature changes (28 to 55). I had to open up the pigtail at the tank, open all valves and allow the propane to evaporate and vent off from the permanent supply lines. Doing this very slowly and being sure that there was no collection of gas. It took about 15 minutes to completely vent the line. Fired up the forge, worked fine, lesson learned; fortunately not the hard way. Shut off the propane at the tank! Comments? Admonishments?

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By Anonymous at 12/19/2005 - 11:03am | Blacksmithing HowTo/Troubleshooting: | Safety

Aieee!

Your theory sounds plausible to me. Glad you're okay, liquid propane scares me.

I'll remember your lesson when I'm in a hurry...sheesh.

Be sure to check out the Jet=Powered Beer Cooler at http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/. The substitution of a forge in place of the jet engine makes this mod a hit at my house! :)

By Tom K at Mon, 12/19/2005 - 12:49pm | login or register to post comments

Too much time

Tom, the guy that wrote this has too much time on his hands and to have read it you and I also have too much time with nothing useful to do.

By Fillis at Thu, 01/19/2006 - 4:21pm | login or register to post comments

Time

Yea.... well.... huff puff, my grammer is better than yours.

By Tony Bivens at Mon, 07/03/2006 - 10:59am | login or register to post comments

mammoth forge (posted from email)

Hi, my name is Anthony. Me and a few of my friends have made a home made forge. It is nothin big and spectacular, but we are wanting one a little bigger. the one we made is from about an 8 gallon compressor tank with inlets for propane gas and it has about a 3 or 4 inch opening in the front. I recently replaced my hot water heater in my home from gas to electric. Now i know that the way the gas went in and everything would probably not work but i was wondering if you knew of any way we could use the tank for a forge. It is a 28 gallon tank and it has a 3 inch hollow tube allthe way through it. it was used to vent the extra LP gas and heat out of the house. Now i kno it is kind of big but could u think of any way that we could turn it into a homemade forge.

Thank you
Anthony

By Tony Bivens at Mon, 07/03/2006 - 11:00am | login or register to post comments

response (emailed)

Interesting. A couple of questions first:

What size steel are you planning to work with in this forge? A forge is usually sized for the work. Too large is a big waste of fuel.

What size propane bottle are you using? A forge this size will not run long on a 25 lb bottle, it will freeze up pretty quick.

How many burners are you planning to run on this mammoth? Atmospheric or blown? You should calculate interior forge volume and btu's per burner. There is a ratio (i'd have to look it up) that is important to follow, otherwise you will have a fancy sausage cooker, it won't get hot enough to forge steel.

How old are you? Sorry to ask but no way to tell.

I am going to post this on the Alexbealer.org website forum for more question and answer. Please post your questions and follow up there.

Thanks for writing!

Tony Bivens

By Tony Bivens at Mon, 07/03/2006 - 11:01am | login or register to post comments

forge

400 in3 / jet.?
You could cut it in half and then take out the liner pipe , then cut that in half and weld it all back up into and acceptable size, or you could start out w/ a 5gal paint bucket and save a lot of time and trouble. But since you want to use a perfictly good tumbler shell for a forge , go for it.

By dan tull at Tue, 07/04/2006 - 5:13pm | login or register to post comments

LPG tank

My top five list of things needed included a bigger propane tank for my gas forge. Crossed it off Sunday when I found a like new 240lb propane tank rolling around in the grocery store parking lot. Somebody must have lost it off their trailer. I did my civic duty and removed this hazard from the parking lot and am diligently trying to locate the jackleg that does not know how to secure a 240 lb bomb. In the mean time I have impressed this wanderer into service fueling my forge, it still had fuel in it! Stuff is where you find it.

By Tony Bivens at Thu, 07/06/2006 - 10:58am | login or register to post comments

"Found" stuff

Sheesh Tony! Where do you grocery shop?

R. C. (Rick) Evans

By rickevans at Mon, 07/10/2006 - 8:39am | login or register to post comments

Anthony's post

i dont kno what the steel we are goin to use. its mostly my friends that are doing this. and yeah it will probably be a 25 lb tank. and probably just one burner. i think they made the small one just to see if they could do it. our ages are 18 to 21. so we are still all pretty young.

(posted by Tony from email question)

By Tony Bivens at Tue, 07/11/2006 - 2:35pm | login or register to post comments

Alex Bealer Blacksmith Association

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