Part I: Building a Propane Forge


I have been holding off on posting any of the progress that I have been doing on the Propane forge assembly because there is a lot of information, it will be dense, and I apologize to the casual reader. 

First things first, if you are not aware, Frankie, Chad and I have been working on recreating a forge for each of us before Frankie leaves to teach out of state. in the above photo I have a 1/4" to 1/8" brass barb fitting and a mig welding tip in my hand. The reason is that these will turn into our propane jet for our burner assemblies. 


Because I have access and its an excuse to use the Southbend lathe, I chucked the fitting into my three jaw self centering chuck and proceeded to drill out the barb fitting.


Close-up view.


Another view.





I could be wrong on this, but I determined that the threads on the mig tip fit best as 1/4-28 so that is the tap I used to tap the brass fitting.

Finished view. 


For the jet I used a 0.023 mig tip, but I purchased a set from Harbor Freight that had all different sizes to experiment once we get the burners fired up.



One down, now 5 to go. Each one of our forges will have two burners that each require one jet.

Fast forward, and all the jets are now done.


Another view.


Next up is connecting all the plumbing together.


It is important to state at this time that for all of our pipe connections we will be using Yellow Gas Line/PTFE Thread Tape that is specifically rated for gas applications. I used regular pipe tape on a different project and learned my lesson with connections that just never seemed to seal. The specific brand that I used was Mill-Rose "3 Wrap" tape that can be found at just about any hardware store.



More Plumbing work. For this particular build we will be using all brass/red bronze fittings because we will need to use compression fittings that are not available in black steel. This is important to note as I first started off by grabbing a few black steel fittings that will only be used in one area. I guess if you were wondering we will not be mixing and matching steel and brass fittings due to the fear of galvanic action, which will corrode the metal. SO AGAIN DO NOT MIX AND MATCH METALS.


These regulators came from Harbor Freight as well and are rated up to 160 PSI. These were each $4-5. I don't think we will be running anywhere near that amount of pressure in our forges. I seem to remember that my furnace seemed to heat up quite nicely at roughly 30-40 PSI.


All done for tonight, I will be sure to assemble a parts list for anyone interested in the next few blog posts I promise so stay tuned!


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