[TheForge] LP burner question.

[GRAF]

I have and use a burner much like the one Frosty has up on:
http://www.blacksmith.org/drupal/forge_burner

It works fine in the forge. I now have another application which 
requires less heat than the minimum that I can get from this burner.

The fire pot that I use to heat my soldering coppers is regulated with 
only a needle valve, no pressure regulator. This makes obtaining a nice 
even heat difficult and when soldering for six or seven hours leads to 
too many trips to clean them do to overheating. In many ways the 
charcoal firepots that I grew up using were far nicer to work with.

At any rate, while working at the forge , it occurred to me that 
building a new LP fire pot with a pressure regulator would give me a 
much quieter, controllable and more efficient piece of equipment. The 
only problem is that the 3/4 inch burner is at least twice what I need 
for soldering, even when I crank the pressure down to near 3 lbs, where 
the flame  gets unstable.
I am only using 50/50 solder . If the coppers get much above 850 or so I 
can not move fast enough to keep from burning the solder which reaches a 
liquid state at half that.

So, has any one tried making one of these burners with 1/2 to 1/3 the 
capacity?
I'd appreciate orifice sizing suggestions still using the mig tips if 
possible. I wonder if 1/2 pip would be to large, perhaps 3/8?
I am guessing that the ratios in the sizing are not linear 1" > 3/4"> 
1/2 etc.



Mike Graf