[TheForge] Oil fired forges

[Dave Brown]

At 17:15 10/06/03 -0400, you wrote:
>I am not sure whether this is exactly what you are looking for, but
>backyard metalcasting at http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com

Carl,

Been to that site a number of times in the past but it's not exactly what 
I'm looking for.  I'm not looking for a burner design but rather 
information on how the burner is arranged (i.e. flame horizontal, flame in 
separate combustion chamber, flame vertical, how vented, etc...)

I've looked through the Lindsay books and the oil cupola furnaces may point 
me in the right direction.

As far as shop heating is concerned there are several approaches that make 
a lot of shop heat, but not adaptable to a forge.

The Mother Earth News (TMEN) has a simple heater design.  I've seen one of 
these in operation and it certainly puts out the heat.  But ... it's an 
enclosed, down draft style furnace with an oil drip burner.  You can find 
plans at 
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me4.html 
If all I wanted to end up with was a shop heater then I might consider 
going this route.  But I don't see this design as adaptable to a 
forge/furnace.  The one I saw in operation had a very yellow flame and in 
internal temperature of 1500F-1800F.  Yeah, you could heat iron in there, 
but it would take a long time to get up to forging temp.  I don't have that 
much patience.

I've looked at the commercial oil burner conversions too.  They'll put out 
a semi-opaque somewhat blue flame (much hotter than TMEN's heater).  The 
drawback is that you need really clean oil.  Not just filtered, but micro 
filtered and polished.  A variation of this is to use the waste vegetable 
oil to make bio-diesel ... well filtered also.  But even with clean oil or 
bio-diesel you have to preheat your fuel because it's much higher viscosity 
than home heating fuel oil or kerosene.  Anyway, I don't want to spend my 
time filtering oil or chemically treating it to make bio-diesel.  Not that 
I'm that lazy, but I want to put my time into blacksmithing.

Then there's a thing called a Babington Burner.  Filter the wvo through a 
window screen and off you go.  No polish filtering 
necessary.  See: 
http://www.babingtontechnology.com/how_does_the_babington_burner_work.htm. 
It has serious potential as a burner of choice for a oil forge for waste 
vegetable oil.  It also had potential for a great "build it yourself" 
project.  Two weeks back when I went to the Guild of Metalsmith's Fall 
Conference I left early on Sunday and headed down to Northfield, MN to 
visit an engineer who has built his own burner using the Babington burner 
as his model.  It's really slick and really puts out the heat ... but still 
that danged yellow flame.  Clear emissions, but not as hot a flame as is 
possible.  The thing is that he left out some parts shown in the patent 
papers for the Babington burner that contribute a lot fuel combustion 
efficiency.

Anyway, step one is to built a shop heater first and learn my lessons about 
wvo heaters and the Babington burners in particular.  If I can get the 
flame that I think I can get, then it should be easily adapted to forging.

Anyone else having thoughts along this line?  Please feel free to share 
them.  I only talk like I know it all, and want to know it all by the time 
I take that looooong nap.  But in actuality I don't really know it all.  I 
just pretend to.

Dave Brown
Heritage Smithing
Green Bay, WI
ABANA, UMBA, GoM, MODA, ARG