Another way is to look at how the doors on professional ovens work. Most are on a couple of arms that swivel from the center of the forge length and then have a counter weight on them to help reduce the load.
Cool build man. I've had pretty good luck using small wisps of kaowool packed into the space between my burner and the forge to close up that gap. It's easily removed when you need to. I also bypassed the burner flare and created the flare in the upper half of the forge's refractory. This has worked well for a few years now. Best of luck and keep on making man!
I suspect the large issue is the opening in the refractory of the forge is too small and keeping the flame too close to the nozzle. That said, when the whole thing is up to welding temp, it doesn't matter how far back into the refractory the nozzle is! :P
Thanks! I love how it came out. It's still holding up pretty well, but I need to redesign the door mechanism I think. It can be a little stubborn at times...
Your door would work every bit as well if you only had one post and tube. The weight hanging on it would actually make it stay where you put it. And you could make the tolerances quit jumping around in so many different ways. The other thing you could do is have the tube part as much as twice the diameter of the pin. And instead use spacers to set it for the job of the day. I bet you never adjust it hot anyway. Just set it for what you will be doing that particular day. What part of the country are you in? I would love to collaborate with you on some of your tools. I'm near Ft Wort Texas
I’m near DC, so not close at all :P Hmmmm a single post... that’s not something I considered. But yeah a huge amount of the binding comes from the two rails fighting each other, especially as they heat and pull out of alignment. I do actually adjust it hot at times. Very very carefully. Perhaps a square post to keep it from rotating outwards... that’s a great idea, I think I’ll try then when it comes time to line the doors :D thanks!
Having worked with heat tunnels and seal blades, I had my share of frozen set screws and bolts. I noticed you stated that you used stainless steel in some part of the bracket that holds the propane injection nozzle. Just a suggestion, but if you want to avoid frozen bolts make sure you have stainless steel to stainless steel. If not, the two metals (as I'm sure you know) will have different expansion quotients and you end up frozen again. Love what you're doing. Forgive an old man for speaking out of turn. All I have left is my experience and the ability to talk your ear off. Ha ha. All the best.
We used to have a couple catamarans my grandfather built and at some point the pin that holds the aluminum rudder assembly on was replaced with a steel pin on one of the boats. After a season, that pin was stuck SOLID. Dissimilar metals can be a huge issue, it's a good thing to bring up :) In this case the stainless steel is just the nozzle on the end of the burner. The problems I'm having are probably just poor alignment and insufficient tolerances built into the parts.
If things keep gumming up you could go with a guillotine style side track system. Now, instead of a top rail and cables, you punch holes in the sides of the tracks and door then use pins to hold things in place. This has the downsides of possibly losing pins and needing a handle on top of the door to hold as you fiddle with the pins. A benefit is that you can put both the bottom and top doors on the same rails. and if your rails are beefy enough they shouldn't warp too much. If you don't mind the complexity and like how cool it looks, slap some rollers or sanded round at the top of the rails and add cables to the top door and attach them to pins. lower the pins, raise the door, raise the pins, lower the door.
I like the way you think! Pins and holes is one of the approaches I thought of for sure :D The main reason I didn't consider it further was I had five days to go and so I settled on a simpler arrangement. I really like being able to position the doors anywhere, which holes limit somewhat. What I really wanted was a tilting cam lock system. Each door would basically hang from two loops angled such that when the door is flat against the forge, the loop is binding with the rail and holds the door still. To move you would grab the door near the bottom and swing it outwards to stop the loop from binding. That would have the added benefit of clearing any debris that gets between the forge body and the doors. In the end, the big takeaway for me is: However you do it, have a lip all the way around both ends of the forge. Having the ends of the forge just open, even if you brick it up, just doesn't contain the heat and combustion nearly as well.
@@BennettTheSmith Another idea here. Have the rails on the side so that they hold the door, but then have a piece that sandwiches the front rail. put your set screw in that piece so that it catches the front rail. And weld a bit of bar to the set screws for a handle, it will help to tighten them when you have gloves on.
@@BennettTheSmith ok, both doors in the rail, but weld on a tiny spacer and a piece of flat stock to the front of the door that goes in front of the rail. put a threaded hole in that or weld a nut on and put the set screws through it so that they catch the front of the rail. the down side here is that you're binding the door to the front of the rail which pulls it away from the body of the forge a bit.
@@BennettTheSmith After some more thought on how to say this (and time spent remembering what it's called because I never use it.) take the tubes off the side of the doors and get some U-channel (or fab it because the doors are rather wide) to wrap around the entire door. then add a spacer and some flat plate to the front of the door that sandwiches the front of the U-channel between itself and the door. Then put your set screws in the front plate.
Just found your channel, but love the build and the laid back style of it! Not constantly pushing products on us... Lol and I had the same issue with my door I built for my forge so looking forward to your solution!!
Instead of having your burner go all the way through the kaowool, have the stainless flare sit half way through and only the diameter of the burner's opening go into the forge chamber. This will stop the flame coming up around your burner and increase the life of the flare. I hope that makes since.
My burner actually is positioned halfway through, but the doors provide enough back pressure to cause flame to go up around it. That also means the whole interior gets up to a relatively uniform temperature, so the nozzle still gets very hot. I don’t mind though, it heats up crazy fast and I can run it at very low pressures and even weld with a single burner :)
uh, shoot, J'ai oublie tout le mots de francais que j'ai etudier dans l'ecol. *Google translates* Oh, hmmm I was way off. I thought about putting a handle on top, but I figured that all the rising heat would make it just as hot. You're right though, I need something better!
@@timoverschuren2165 Nope, I just took french in high school. If you didn't bother to run it through google, my sentence just says "I forgot all of the french words I studied in school" :P
Another way is to look at how the doors on professional ovens work. Most are on a couple of arms that swivel from the center of the forge length and then have a counter weight on them to help reduce the load.
Very good forge, Bravo
Thanks :)
Cool build man. I've had pretty good luck using small wisps of kaowool packed into the space between my burner and the forge to close up that gap. It's easily removed when you need to. I also bypassed the burner flare and created the flare in the upper half of the forge's refractory. This has worked well for a few years now. Best of luck and keep on making man!
I suspect the large issue is the opening in the refractory of the forge is too small and keeping the flame too close to the nozzle. That said, when the whole thing is up to welding temp, it doesn't matter how far back into the refractory the nozzle is! :P
Nice
Use dry graphite powder to lube your tubes
Lovely forge you got there.
Thanks! I love how it came out. It's still holding up pretty well, but I need to redesign the door mechanism I think. It can be a little stubborn at times...
Bennett Marschner hah. Just got finished with a gas forge of my own and I must say yours is much fancier.
Look at a boiler end door, or add off set handles you can buy at a home depot
So I did some googling and I’m not sure what specific doors you’re thinking of. Can you explain what you mean? :)
Your door would work every bit as well if you only had one post and tube. The weight hanging on it would actually make it stay where you put it. And you could make the tolerances quit jumping around in so many different ways.
The other thing you could do is have the tube part as much as twice the diameter of the pin. And instead use spacers to set it for the job of the day. I bet you never adjust it hot anyway. Just set it for what you will be doing that particular day.
What part of the country are you in? I would love to collaborate with you on some of your tools. I'm near Ft Wort Texas
I’m near DC, so not close at all :P
Hmmmm a single post... that’s not something I considered. But yeah a huge amount of the binding comes from the two rails fighting each other, especially as they heat and pull out of alignment.
I do actually adjust it hot at times. Very very carefully. Perhaps a square post to keep it from rotating outwards... that’s a great idea, I think I’ll try then when it comes time to line the doors :D thanks!
Having worked with heat tunnels and seal blades, I had my share of frozen set screws and bolts. I noticed you stated that you used stainless steel in some part of the bracket that holds the propane injection nozzle. Just a suggestion, but if you want to avoid frozen bolts make sure you have stainless steel to stainless steel. If not, the two metals (as I'm sure you know) will have different expansion quotients and you end up frozen again. Love what you're doing. Forgive an old man for speaking out of turn. All I have left is my experience and the ability to talk your ear off. Ha ha. All the best.
We used to have a couple catamarans my grandfather built and at some point the pin that holds the aluminum rudder assembly on was replaced with a steel pin on one of the boats. After a season, that pin was stuck SOLID. Dissimilar metals can be a huge issue, it's a good thing to bring up :)
In this case the stainless steel is just the nozzle on the end of the burner. The problems I'm having are probably just poor alignment and insufficient tolerances built into the parts.
If things keep gumming up you could go with a guillotine style side track system. Now, instead of a top rail and cables, you punch holes in the sides of the tracks and door then use pins to hold things in place. This has the downsides of possibly losing pins and needing a handle on top of the door to hold as you fiddle with the pins. A benefit is that you can put both the bottom and top doors on the same rails. and if your rails are beefy enough they shouldn't warp too much.
If you don't mind the complexity and like how cool it looks, slap some rollers or sanded round at the top of the rails and add cables to the top door and attach them to pins. lower the pins, raise the door, raise the pins, lower the door.
I like the way you think! Pins and holes is one of the approaches I thought of for sure :D The main reason I didn't consider it further was I had five days to go and so I settled on a simpler arrangement.
I really like being able to position the doors anywhere, which holes limit somewhat. What I really wanted was a tilting cam lock system. Each door would basically hang from two loops angled such that when the door is flat against the forge, the loop is binding with the rail and holds the door still. To move you would grab the door near the bottom and swing it outwards to stop the loop from binding. That would have the added benefit of clearing any debris that gets between the forge body and the doors.
In the end, the big takeaway for me is: However you do it, have a lip all the way around both ends of the forge. Having the ends of the forge just open, even if you brick it up, just doesn't contain the heat and combustion nearly as well.
@@BennettTheSmith Another idea here. Have the rails on the side so that they hold the door, but then have a piece that sandwiches the front rail. put your set screw in that piece so that it catches the front rail.
And weld a bit of bar to the set screws for a handle, it will help to tighten them when you have gloves on.
@@Chaogmu Hmmm not certain I follow. Do you mean rather than the tube, use two halves that clamp around the rail?
@@BennettTheSmith ok, both doors in the rail, but weld on a tiny spacer and a piece of flat stock to the front of the door that goes in front of the rail. put a threaded hole in that or weld a nut on and put the set screws through it so that they catch the front of the rail.
the down side here is that you're binding the door to the front of the rail which pulls it away from the body of the forge a bit.
@@BennettTheSmith After some more thought on how to say this (and time spent remembering what it's called because I never use it.) take the tubes off the side of the doors and get some U-channel (or fab it because the doors are rather wide) to wrap around the entire door. then add a spacer and some flat plate to the front of the door that sandwiches the front of the U-channel between itself and the door. Then put your set screws in the front plate.
Just found your channel, but love the build and the laid back style of it! Not constantly pushing products on us... Lol and I had the same issue with my door I built for my forge so looking forward to your solution!!
Instead of having your burner go all the way through the kaowool, have the stainless flare sit half way through and only the diameter of the burner's opening go into the forge chamber. This will stop the flame coming up around your burner and increase the life of the flare. I hope that makes since.
My burner actually is positioned halfway through, but the doors provide enough back pressure to cause flame to go up around it. That also means the whole interior gets up to a relatively uniform temperature, so the nozzle still gets very hot.
I don’t mind though, it heats up crazy fast and I can run it at very low pressures and even weld with a single burner :)
It seems to have held up well over all! Not too bad all things considered.
I just found your channel, sub'd, watching and learning
try some anti seize that is used on head bolts and stuff like that it will take the heat and be a little slick.
Dude, mount the freaking door the same way you hinged the top of the forge. No point in trying to reinvent the wheel.
J'aurais mis une poignée au dessus de la partie supérieur de l'entrée de la forge pour pouvoir la faire coulisser quand elle est chaude
uh, shoot, J'ai oublie tout le mots de francais que j'ai etudier dans l'ecol. *Google translates* Oh, hmmm I was way off. I thought about putting a handle on top, but I figured that all the rising heat would make it just as hot. You're right though, I need something better!
@@BennettTheSmith Are you french?
@@timoverschuren2165 Nope, I just took french in high school. If you didn't bother to run it through google, my sentence just says "I forgot all of the french words I studied in school" :P