How to Make a Propane Forge

in this video learn how to make a high-efficiency propane Forge most of the parts can be obtained locally especially if you have a pottery supply place near you the forge can reach very high temperatures and can be used for knife making glass making or general blacksmith work this is a very much improved Forge compared to my coffee can Forge video if you saw that on my channel for the body of the propane Forge I'm going to use this air portable air tank I picked this up quite some time ago for this very specific purpose it was on sale was pretty cheap so I'm gonna sacrifice this for the body now the first few minutes of this video don't follow exactly what I do watch the whole video and then if you decide to build one only use the parts that are applicable that makes sense because I'm including the video that I my mistakes just so you could see what I did wrong and I had already shot the video now what I end up doing was I cut off the end of the tank and I was going to make a door but that I realized wasn't the correct approach so just watch the video and you'll see where I ended up and it'll become very apparent what part to make the cuts on the tank so so enjoy okay so I had to make a slight modification instead of making a door I've decided to well tackle out this back on to this so I'm just going to walk that in so don't cut this off like I did I was thinking about making a door but that just complicating it's more moving part so what I'm going to do well this back on and then I'm going to open up both ends so this end here I'm going to cut up both ends and then fill it with the wall and the brick just making it open like this is a little easier to work with and it just simplifies the design so and then what I used to trace it was I just had a pot here that was the right circumference and I just use the marker and marked it all the way around so next I'm going to use a zip cut and cut these out tackle that back on and then we'll put wool in this and we're ready to go again okay I got the two ends cut out I've enlarged them I've welded back on this side so here the two plates that I cut out so I had my original holes here and here and then just the two ends that I cut out to make it a little bit bigger I won't need those anymore it was nice and open so I'm going to next figure out how to get the fire bricks in there so get some fire bricks for the base for the floor of the forge and I need to tap some holes in this two-inch nipple so it's just a regular pipe nipple I'm going to tap four holes in here so it can hold the propane torch just got here so I can hold it in place once it's in the Forge and I'm going to cut out a hole here and then weld this on I don't have a hole saw the right size for this so I'm going to just drill some holes all the way around the perimeter of the hole Dremel it out and then weld this well this nipple in place [Music] [Music] you [Music] so I've drilled four holes all the way around this now and I have a 1032 tap I'm going to tap this hole so that I can put four screws bolts all the way around so I can tighten it around the burner [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so what I have done now is I have some fire break in here for the floor of the forge this stuff is here is I think rated up to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit it's pretty light I cut so the two bricks would fit in and then I cut four pieces to raise it up above the floor of the of the forge itself and I want to cement it down using this high temperature stolen furniture furnace cement and it's rated up to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit so it should be more than adequate and so I'm just going to spread some on just cement everything in place and it just kind of holds it in and then then I want to go cut the wall and install the wool blanket inside here you [Music] [Music] so what I have here is the ceramic blanket when I cut this I'm going to wear my p100 respirator and I'm cutting it inside and I'm going to vacuum up all the ceramic fibers after I'm done because this stuff isn't so great for your lungs it's not going to have anything in your lungs to be to be frank so I made some measurements around the circumference of the of the Forge and I landed on I need 27 and a half I believe or 28 inches around and it's going to be 4 I'm going to cut it down 14 and a half down here which is the length of the forge of the cylinder so I'm going to do that on the floor of the garage here and I also have this this ceramic board too I've had this from a couple of years ago and I'm going to cut out some ends to use as backing plates on the forge but first I'm going to cut this wool blanket so I'm going to stick on a respirator and grab a sharp utility knife and have at it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so what I've done I also work gloves because this stuff is like insulation it will make it itchy and I'm going to go rinse off now some cold water because cold waters will keep will keep your pores closed if you use hot water your pores will open up in these fibers just like fiberglass insulation we get in there and on the edge so just a little little tip so I had to I made it a little long so I cut it out a bit more once I got it into the into the into the Forge and then I made it fit with the brick so I put the brick in and then I cut out another piece I just cut a little long and then I just kind of cut off more and more until I got it to fit so I rolled it up fit it in as you saw and it's looking pretty good now next I'm going to probably put some of that fiber board in and make a back on it so I'm going to close at the back because it's fairly open so I'm going to close that down so it's just a little bit smaller so I don't lose as much heat and then I'm going to cover it with some refractory I need to poke a hole inside here so I'm going to use a knife and just cut a hole there so I can get the the Forge burner in right here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] just taking some saran wrap here and just tracing out just the opening here so I can transpose it easily to to the fiber board I'm going to probably cut this out on a piece of cardboard or foam board just so that I can do a test fit before I actually set up before I actually cut a piece of the the ceramic board so I have a piece of like just sacrificial foam here foam board and I'm going to trace it out lay it on this [Music] [Music] so this here is one inch fake fiberboard ceramic fiber board and I traced out the template that I had for the exhaust port the exhaust wall at the back and now I'm going to just cut it out it's easy enough to cut out just use a knife and just again just like the wool just cut that out I won't bother to show that and then I'll install that into the forge okay I got this all cut out now the fiber board next I'm just going to squeeze friction fit this into the exhausts part of the forge [Applause] [Music] so what I've done is I cut out this plate that I'm going to use to stabilize the the wool board the ceramic fiber board to the Forge so I'm just going to show you how I'm going to do that I have this angle bracket which will be welded on to this so it holds it and I cut out this inside part here because what I want to do is make the whole of the Forge smaller but I can't just use metal because the metal will overheat I need to insulate it with some wool and that's what the wool board will be for kind of very similar to what I did in the back but I want to make this removable so what I will do is up here I have this I've tapped out this piece of square stock and then I have this piece of bar stock here which will fit in which then I can tighten down and hold and if I need to remove it I can loosen these and take this out I'm going to weld that up onto the top here and then this bar will be welded on to this here like that and then it can move back and forth like that so it's removable ok so I have this all welded up this breaks now that's going to hold a piece of wool board that I cut out so I cut out a piece of ceramic wool board and it's going to sit here like this and then this is going to screw to the wool board so the wool board will be like that and I got some drilled some holes I've got some coarse thread screws that I'm going to screw in here later I'm not going to do that right now I just want to show you how this is going to work and then this piece that I've welded up here and tap some screw holes we'll just hold it in place right like that so that'll constrict the opening shrinking down but if I need access to the inside of the force to do maintenance I can just take the screw out and remove this so I'm going to stabilize the wool next so the fibers don't become airborne once I once I fire up the fort so what I what I'm going to use for that is I mentioned before I'm going to use this stuff here it's called ITC 100 HT and it is made by International Technical Ceramics hence the ITC so it comes as a paste so what I'm going to do with this is I actually I've already mixed some up and I've mixed them up and created a slurry so the slurry you mix it according to the spec sheet you mix it one part and I think two parts to one so two parts of this stuff to one part water or basically I think it's one part and 50% water so I've just mix it up so it's a slurry and then I'm going to use it and apply it but I'm going to have to set it up on the floor so I can reach my hand down and do that so I'll do that next [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] you okay I have it all coated now I'm gonna let it dry and see how it comes out and I might have to put another coat on and here I would have a little additional light on it so you can kind of see what it looks like in there it's all it's all coated there so it's all good the next thing I'm going to do is now that this is set up a bit the ITC 100 is I'm just going to test fit this and put these screws in to hold it in place so again I have some coarse threaded screws here and I'm just going to screw this into [Music] so now if I loosen this this is completely removable I'm going to eventually coat this with the ITC 100 but for now I'm going to get ready to touch up any spots that I might have missed and just make sure I've got a coat of ITC 100 on all these services so this is the back of the forge and I've mixed up some of this high-temperature stove and furnace cement that I'd use the glue or cement down these these fire bricks and what I did was I just diluted down some of it with water until it became this slurry very similar to the ITC 100 and I'm just going to use it to seal at the back of the forge this doesn't get really any direct heat but I would like to seal it up the beak to prevent the the ceramic fibers from becoming airborne so you know you don't breathe them in so this should work okay if not it's not a big deal if this doesn't work but I think it should work just fine [Music] and I believe this cement is silica based so that's what gives it the high-temperature refractory properties I believe if you have trouble getting ITC 100 I just ordered online it's the only way I was able to get it but if you find it too expensive or you just want an experiment another option is possibly this could work for sealing up the forge the inside of the forge I haven't tried it myself but it's probably okay it says on the container it can withstand temperatures up to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit so that's well within the range of the forge I might build a smaller Forge out of a coffee can again if you haven't checked up that video check that one out and um I have some leftover wool and maybe I'll experiment and see how that works using this using this cement instead of the ITC 100 because this stuff here is very readily available I got this locally HS at the hardware store [Music] so this is the ITC 100 in paste form and I mixed up a little bit more of it to finish off the front of the forge so I just added some more water I added some here and then I just stirred it around until it came to slurry again just like I did before if I didn't show you earlier so I have a brush I'm going to just apply to the front of this of this panel now just to finish this off and let this dry and it will be ready to to fire I might just touch up with some high heat paint along all the metal just so that it doesn't rust after I'm done this [Music] [Music] so the last thing I have to do is to install the propane burner into the Forge and you can if you don't know or you don't have one of these burners you can learn how to build one of these off of my channel or you can look up online a run real burner I have a another version of this but this is a modified version that I made it has a choke that goes back and forth like this to constrict the airflow but I quite like this design because it's a compact so I'm gonna do is just stick it in here and just have it so that it ends up just entering the chamber of the forge and now tightening down these screws on the burner itself I should say these bolts [Music] and the way I have this burner installed is I have it a bit more of an angle going in so that it swirls around inside you can experiment to see what works best for you but there it is mounted and I'll just show you the inside so the inside there you can just see that it's protruding into the chamber of the forge hopefully it will focus in there and that hopefully should work pretty good so there it is all installed tightened down I might have to just adjust the angle a tiny bit more but that's that's ready to go so I'm just going to let everything cure up completely or I should say harden let the water evaporate out of the ITC 100 and then I'm going to fire it up and show you it in operation I just want to take a moment and just mention the final sizes of everything and the size of the of the actual Forge container air tank that I used because I don't think to give those dimensions so for the restrictor plate for the opening I have about three and a quarter inches in diameter and that was sized so that the tongs the blacksmith tongs could easily fit in and out so I could manipulate without damaging the the wool so that plate there to restrict the opening and the actual sizing the actual size of the tank is 10 inches in diameter and it's in length it is 14 got 14 and a half in length and adding two inches of cable so I added one inch and then another inch to make it two inches thick gives me an opening and including these bricks here or one inch each gives me an opening a four and a half in diameter for the opening so that's pretty good it's a good size I found this chamber heats up really quickly and it maintains heat and also with the cable the side of the chamber doesn't with two inches doesn't takes a really long time to get really hot I found after 10 minutes of use I could put my hand on the side of the chamber and it wasn't an issue burning my hand or anything like that so those are D dimensions Here I am lighting the forge with a long barbecue lighter I placed the lit lighter right into the nozzle of the burner inside the forge you don't want to turn on the propane and then like the Forge that's not good you have a big boom [Music] [Music] the forge heated up really quickly as you can see the Chamber's already starting to glow [Music] this is around after about a minute gorgeous almost up to operating temperature it's really starting to get hot now here you can see the propane burner protruding from Forge I think it's a bit long so I mean modify it so shorter rottenness I'll burn but for now it works great here's a close-up view of inside the chamber it's really starting now the propane burner has been shut down now to turn off the forge it takes a while for cooldown as you can see still really glowing and I should also mention the outside of the forge is just warm and it was cool enough to touch so this concludes the building of the propane Forge if you want to learn how to build a propane burner check out that video as well so stay tuned to my channel and consider subscribing if you like this video and I'll have more videos to come in the future possibly with this Forge or other cool projects that I have in the hopper you

Channel: Andrew W

Views: 311,608

Rating: 4.7863331 out of 5

Keywords: propane forge, how to make a propane forge, ceramic wool, kaowool forge, DIY propane forge, blacksmith forge, knifemaking, sword making, knife forge

Id: nJDRwzOj1jc

Length: 31min 4sec (1864 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2016