[TheForge] Re: Forge in Ireland

[Mike Spencer]

me>     http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/tuyere.html

Fred> What is the water tank do?  

That nozzle ends up sticking into or very near the core of your fire.
So it's double-walled.  Air goes through the center hole.  Water in
the tank fills the space between the walls and cools the nozzle to
keep it from burning off.  The water boils away and you have to keep
re-filling it.

Fred> Why isn't there one on a bottom draft forge?

Harder to build?  Not so much benefit?  Dunno.

I saw an interesting (and very slightly similar) thing in an open
hearth steel furnace once.  Oxygen lance goes into the melt but it's a
double pipe, one inside the other.  Oxygen blows through the center
one.  Propane goes through the outer one.  I'd have thought that the
propane would just use up the oxy and create more heat but the
engineer told me that at the temps in a steel melt, catalytic cracking
of the propane takes place; that process is endothermic; and so it
cools the lance and keeps it from burning away as fast as it otherwise
might.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^