[TheForge] Gas forges

[Keporter at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/20/2004 5:46:28 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
blacksmith at comcast.net writes:
I've used Larry Zoeller's sidearm burner design for a couple of years now,
and I'm real happy with them.  I just saw a picture of the Mike
Porter-designed burner that Larry built.  I'm waiting to hear what he has to
say about the performance.  I'm working on my own copy, but it's going to
take a while.  It's quite a piece of engineering.

Mike Murphy
Mike
Larry likes my burners well enough to carry the book and provide burner parts 
for them. On the other hand, I want to state again that one burner design is 
no more desirable than "one size fits all" socks. Every burner design runs 
different, and one man's preference is another man's aggravation. My burners are 
very high performance, but a breeze will give you fits when running them 
outdoors within a forge, and they are no where near as simple to build as the 
sidearm. People who want to use city gas will probably always stay with fan blown 
burner systems.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that the two years spent writing 
that book was for the purpose of giving craftsmen more freedom of choice. 
Therefore, the last thing I want to see is other burner designs disappearing. I 
am just as proud of my designs as any one of you is of his own work, but 
despite its title, the book isn't really about burners; there is way more 
information in it than just burner design. Jack asked me to write a book for people who 
needed to switch away from coal, but were nervous about using propane. The 
book is a manual of safe control and equipment building for propane heating. If 
there had been room, city gas would have been included; as it was, a lot of the 
book still ended up "on the cutting room floor."
Michael Porter