[TheForge] Gas Forge Plans - a question

[Jerry Frost]

To spin or not to spin? I'll say right off I'm a big fan of vortices but 
admit they're often either unnecessary or detrimental. It all depends.

There are so many different ways of addressing burner/flame alignment in a 
furnace it'd take a bunch of pages and illustrations to touch on the basics. 
A lot depends on what you want your forge to do performance wise. Some 
things are just not likely to happen like good spot heat as found in 
coal/charcoal forges.

When good patent servers were free I spent a lot of time looking through 
different furnace designs for ideas. My favorite was the "recuperative wall 
furnace" but that's a whole different topic. The other basic that caught my 
eye was the idea of burners as air(flame) curtains in furnace openings.

For this an angled burner is necessary, not only to direct flame inwards 
from the door but to produce a vortex. This configuration places the burner 
(in a single burner furnace) about 1/3 of the chamber length from the 
opening. It is angled to produce a strong vortex, almost tangential to the 
floor or roof (not sides). It is also angled inwards from the door (guessing 
from undimensioned patent drawings) around 15-20*(max).

>From studying up on other vortex devices properly done this could produce a 
furnace with exquisitely even heat and relatively cool dragon's breath. 
There's also a hot zone near the opening if the burner is tangential to the 
floor. I haven't played with this configuration but plan to when I have the 
shop up and running.

In general though a small forge say 300-500cu/in. or so is pretty 
insensitive to spin/no-spin. Once you get above the 500cu/in +/- volume the 
actions of vortices become noticable and have either positive or negative 
effect depending on what you're intentions are.

The 5gl bucket forge Larry's plan makes is on the threshold of making use of 
a vortex burner configuration and should work just fine with or without it.

My favorite aspect of these plans is something I've been trying to get 
across for years. A forge does NOT need to be complex and usually works 
better the simpler it is. This is a sweet design.

Thanks Larry.

Frosty
----------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry Zoeller" <zman59 at earthlink.net>


> To All,
> I have always felt that you really only need to vortex the burner when you
> are running a blower driven gas forge and not on a atmospheric forge.  I
> feel that because you are pushing the heat through so fast with the blower
> that you need some to for the heat to disperse evenly in the forge body.
> You do not have all that much flow with the atmospheric burners, so it
> seems to spread more evenly.  The forge also has the flat firebrick 
> bottom,
> every forge that I have seen that had a flat bottom and a vortex burner 
> the
> flame seamed to hit a flat spot and wants to shot out the front opening
> giving another hot spot or uneven heat.  I am sure that there are others
> that will disagree with thinking, but these are the findings from my own
> personal experience with forges over the years.
>
> Thanks,
> Larry Zoeller
> 4312 Lahnna Dr.
> Louisville, KY 40216
> zman59 at earthlink.net
> http://www.geocities.com/zoellerforge/
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Lynn Emrich <theatre_weapons at yahoo.com>
>> To: Sponsored by ABANA <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
>> Date: 12/30/2005 8:05:23 AM
>> Subject: RE: [TheForge] Gas Forge Plans - a question
>>
>> Larry,
>> I bookmarked your sites as it is the best and clearest
>> plans that I have seen. Thanks for sharing!
>> One question. I had always thought the burner should
>> come in at an angle to help prevent hot spots. Did I
>> miss that part?
>> Lynn