Gas Forge Floor (Natural Stone or porcelain tile)

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DairyFarmer

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I am finishing my first forge, propane powered using 3/4" burners. It is basically a box of soft firebrick
I was worried about corroding or melting into/through my firebrick base and wanted to put down something that could be beaten up and replaced. I have access to some ceramic tile, but read on forums here that it is no good. There was nothing on using natural stone or porcelain floor tiles. I was wondering if one of these would work?
 
As you know just by handling it, insulating firebrick is quite soft and doesn't do well in areas where it is going to get alot of traffic. I would just replace the insulating brick on the floor with hard firebrick - k26 should give you everything you need as far as abrasion resistance. You will find that the hard brick does not hold the heat as well as insulating firebrick does, but it will stand up to the rigors of forging much better. A bit harder to fabricate - you will need a diamond blade.
 
My propane forge is lined with satanite and hard fire brick on the floor.


Sent via telegraph with the same fingers I use to sip whiskey.
 
stevewest said:
As you know just by handling it, insulating firebrick is quite soft and doesn't do well in areas where it is going to get alot of traffic. I would just replace the insulating brick on the floor with hard firebrick - k26 should give you everything you need as far as abrasion resistance. You will find that the hard brick does not hold the heat as well as insulating firebrick does, but it will stand up to the rigors of forging much better. A bit harder to fabricate - you will need a diamond blade.
Click to expand...

I can't really remove the brick, I chose soft brick for the insulating property. I want to but a new floor down to take the ware and tare. There fore I was thinking either tile or cutting some more brick. I can't upload a photo because the photo doesn't have a URL. I don't see where I could attach the file.
So therefore my question is would natural or porcelain tile work for a floor?
 
I tried porcelain tile in an electric HT oven once. It cracked up pretty quickly and I'd expect it to be worse in a forge.

Kiln shelf is quite widely used for forge floors and is available from pottery suppliers.
 
Would you trust "kiln shelf" like 5" sheet from Amazon?
I don't have any local pottery supply, they are far away.
 
Sounds like you plan to weld in your forge ?
Ordinary ceramic tile will melt at forge temperature. Some natural stone will too, if not melt will crumble from thermal cycling.
Use a hard firebrick & be cautious not spilling too much flux within.
 
Kiln shelf makes a good forge floor. A 1/2" layer of satanite will also work.

1/2" of Cast-O-lite 30 would be even more durable. I have 1000 pound of the stuff, send me an email or PM and I'll send you a flat rate box of it to line your forge floor.
 
http://www.theceramicshop.com/produ...G_OiQu31gqTJjLK3Sn5Btrn1iCUmzm4JcTBoCll3w_wcB

Found this. The floor is about 19 1/4" long by 9" wide. The walls are 18 1/2" long by 9 1/4" tall. Estimating a little on the larger side. It's soft fire brick wrapped(welded) in 1/8" angle iron and plate steel with 3 atmospheric burners in the top. The ones made with 1"-3/4" reducer, 8" long 3/4" pipe and a 3" long piece of 1" pipe made into a flare with the end being 1.5".
No idea if I'll hit forge welding temps, I would like to try a little bit of casting. I can't replace bricks without cutting and redoing welds, therefore to prolong the forges life I was look for ways to protect the brick.
 
That is a big forge chamber - 1458 sq.in.

You are going to need huge burners to get it up to welding heat. That is about three times the size of most big welding forges. If my head math is right, you will need about 800,000BTU to get it to welding heat. That would take eight 100K Graham Burners. I suspect you will need three 1.5" blown burners to run it.

It may be too late to change your setup, so optimizing it would be your next best thing. At the minimum, use satanite to round the corners to get an ovalish chamber.

To reduce the chamber size and increase the thermal properties -
I would suggest you add a 1" layer of Hi-Z Ins-wool inside the soft bricks, and cover that with satanite and ITC-100 to get a 7" round chamber with a 4" wide flat floor. Cut strips or Ins-wool to fill in the corners (use a good bit of satanite to plaster them in place and shape the curve) to make the corners rounded, then add the main blanket. You may have to do the bottom corners first, and when it is dry, flip the forge over and do the top corners. Using Rigidizer when installing the main blanket might make things easier.
This modification will reduce your chamber to about 600 sq.in. That should weld with three 100K burners.
 
I'm with Stacy in using kiln shelves. I use that in my heat treat oven and thy are easy to replaces. Also that is a HUGE forge to get to welding temp. Going to go through the propane rather quickly even at non welding temps. My welding forge is small. My thought I I don't need a lot of space to weld up a billet. I'm actually making another on that is smaller, doing one like burt fosters small welding forge.
 
As Stacy says, that's huge, at least for bladesmithing.

I'd envisaged something like one I built a year or two back, trying for an all-in-one forge that would go all the way from HT temperatures to welding temperatures. That used a single 1" burner and could hold any temperature between 750 and 1400 degC (1382-2552 degF) indefinitely. The floor area was 6" x 13 1/2", but the openings were small (3" x 4 1/2") and it was usually run with the back one plugged and the front one partially restricted to keep the heat losses down..



The openings are likely to be the biggest heat loss. How big are they? Can you reduce them?

In your shoes, I'd try to use what is there and only make those changes needed to make it do what you need it to do at the time. It will fail. When it does, you'll have learned enough to decide what to replace it with. If you try to make it last forever, there's a good chance there will come a point where it's holding you back but you've invested too much time/effort/money to move on.
 
You could fill the large chamber with more fire bricks which would take it down to a good size. Then block the ends with brick and it should work ok.
 
Insulating firebrick won't get destroyed by normal wear and tear, however, it will dissolve if you use an acid based flux such as borax(boric acid). A simple solution is to either use something else as flux, such as kerosene or brake cleaner, or dry weld using nothing at all. I dry weld and get great results.

Yes, that's a monstrous forge designed to waste propane for knife making. Being as large as it is, you should be able to easily fit hard firebrick from the hardware/tractor supply store in it.
 
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