[TheForge] Venturi Burners Hot Enough?

Tue May 13 17:28:00 2003

I agree, Ed.

Ever since I saw Bill Fiorini (hi Bill) weld damascus all day long in one at CanIron, I was convinced. Dump the hairdryer, can the squirrel cage, venturis rock!
True, they are finicky to tune but once you get them dialed, they are pretty darn efficient. I can run 8 hours on a 25 gallon tank before the sides even start to sweat. This is with an .030 orifice and ~5 to 7psi. Someone mentioned a long time ago here (Dave B?) that when things were just right, he got a green flame out of his forge. Me too. I have never melted brass, bronze, etc. in this forge so I have to agree that there may be some reason to this: too lean a flame is blue, too rich is yellow. What do these two colors combine to make in the spectrum?  Just a guess.

Alas, now that I have natural gas in the new bldg. I may have to switch back to a blower just for the sake of saving floor space. I did like the old hair dryer approach for the sheer sake of finding a $1 hair dryer that worked good enough. Grant's little blower's work great but you have to choke off darn near the whole intake to not blow the flame right out of the forge, and this was witnessed on a forge the size of a 55 gallon drum, you couldn't feed it enough gas to keep up with the air. 

I'm keepin my eyes open for a suitable blower for the new setup but I'll always keep the venturi for the street fairs, demos, etc.

Steve Howell
Hutchinson Tech '89

>>>>>>>>>>

Yes they are hot enough.  And I have proof!

I feel sorry for people who are thinking of building a gas forge for the
first time.  Gas forges can be simple and reliable tools, but you wouldn't
know it by some of the rumors and strong opinions out there.  So I have put
up some photos of steel that recently melted in my forge, to give a little
credibility to one design anyway.

Our guild recently had a meeting with a bunch of gas forges and people
curious about how to build them.  I was a little surprised that some people
still think that us folks with the venturi burners supposedly don't really
know how hot our forges get and tend to exaggerate.  So here is a shot of
the burner I got from Jay Hayes and a little hard evidence that they work. 
I knew the forge got plenty hot, but this surprised me even after having
used the forge for about 2 years.

I sound like a salesman but I'm not.  I just love my forge!    

http://www.geocities.com/edsusenet/forge.html

Ed

http://www.hutchtel.net
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