[TheForge] Gas forges

[Michael H. Murphy]

Mike, Larry, and especially Ron Reil, who seems to be one of the people who
really got this stuff going:

I have no intention of giving up on the sidearm burners.  As Mike said,
there is no "one size fits all."  I'm just interested in seeing how far we
can carry this thing out.  Can we build one that will use methane?  In that
case, the flatulence from Washington would keep us all forging for years.  I
know one guy who is going to try using a series of plasma jets to heat a
forge.  Also (was it here on theforge?) I heard about someone trying to
build an injector that would atomize used cooking oil to heat a forge.  Of
course, for reenactments and demonstrations, people expect coal, sparks and
smoke, so we have to keep those going.  And for some things, you can't beat
a coal fire.

I'm getting a bit long-winded here, but I agree with Mike's statement about
wanting to give a craftsman freedom of choice.  The more choices you have in
tools and methods, the closer you can get to what you really want to do.

Diversity can be fun.

Mike "Murf" Murphy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:theforge-
> bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Keporter at aol.com
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 10:40 AM
> To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Gas forges
> 
> 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
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