Burner Blowers

Though I didn't spend much physical time in the shop while finishing my degree, I did think about it a lot. One of the things I'd considered was a less costly blower fan for my burner. Now, you're probably thinking "BFD, it's just a fan" and that is true, but I like to aim for efficiencies when I can, and should I need to run this stuff off of a smaller power source, the issue of power consumption would be important. By way of comparison, a venturi burner uses more propane than a blown burner does, but no electricity which is one of the "selling points" when people discuss burner design- you can run it anywhere! If I had a smaller blower, then I could feasibly be able to use my forge wherever I had a car and power inverter- or even a car battery.   My long standing blower is a 120CFM unit with a 60CFM side blower that runs off of 110V pulling 1.1A to give 3000RPM. I don't recall if I have any pictures of it in action, but for day-to-day forging, I kept the piece of cardboard over the opening such that there was almost no air getting in (note, there is a side inlet so that the fan never pulls zero air, I assume this is a safety feature to keep the motor from burning out).   Last night I tried a 15CFM unit running off of 110V pulling 0.21A at 1750RPM. I was impressed. I made a restrictor plate out of an altoids tin and can adjust the airflow that way. I can choke it down to 1450degF if I mess with the propane input, and I "cranked it" up to 2101degF. That said, if I choked it down too low it would gurgle, burp and then report- so it was drawing propane back into the motor and igniting it. Or, more likely, the heat from the burner pipe was flowing up to the blower, taking the propane with it. If the burner outlet could be outside of the forge then I might be able to run this small blower. A backfire situation is not great, but it gave a lot of warning before it happened, and it's just a matter of not running too much gas with too little air.   It also doesn't give welding heat, but I kept the old blower choked out even when I made that billet for the twin seaxs so it was still overkill. I'm thinking something on the order of 30CFM pulling 0.5A might give me the air for welding with the control for "low temp" heat treating IF I were to want a single unit for all of the forging I could conceive of doing. In the meantime, the larger blower will stay on a shelf for those high heat needs. [EDIT: to add, the small blower became too unstable for long term forging. The gurgling and backfiring became an issue when the blower had any noticable restriciton. I have gone back to the larger blower, but will continue to look for a smaller unit.]

I'm baaack

What's up my faithful followers? I finished my degree (graduated Summa Cum Laude) and my professional writing certificate, so I'm free to spend more time in the shop.

Tonight I finished my twin Seaxes, and I completely revised the beginner's page. The seax pics are on my flickr feed and will be added to the galleries this week.

It's good to be back, I hope I can update far more frequently.

Laters.

5 Elements Forge Hammer-in

My friend Geoff hosted the 2nd hammer-in in what may be a series. He continued working on a blade that he started last time as part of his press-testing. This time it was surface grinding and heat treating. Photos are at http://alchemyforge.net/5EF-H2-jan2010.html The finished knife will be donated to the Northwest Knife Collectors as a raffle item at their next fundrraiser, and I think they decided to do a sort of rifleman's knife with a forged S-guard... but I wasn't privy to the entire conversation, so we'll see how this progresses.

He also had engraver Tom Sterling in attendance with a hands-on demo. I wasn't able to participate in that, but it looked like fun. Geoff's Mrs made some killer chili, cinnamon rolls and cornbread, and the lunch table conversation was interesting and stayed on-topic (i.e. it didn't stray into the political) which was nice.

First Grad School app is on the wing...

I'm actually a week late with this.  Last Monday I sent my first grad school application to the College of William and Mary, via certified mail. It really feels like it was weeks ago.  I almost forgot to send my transcripts but got those ordered and they should be there by now.  I know I won't hear until April (at least) but I'm already nervous... that's great.  My application to Washington State University is next and I think I'll be removing those blog entries (saving them for another time) just in case some intrepid application reviewer decides to look for me in the interwebtubes.   In related news, I'm almost done with this semester- one assignment and a final, then I'm done.  Next semester has me working on my internship, one philosophy class (a capstone, and I'm hopeful it's not as "busy for the sake of being busy" as the capstone I dropped this semester was) and a 1-credit seminar about food choices (based on the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma").  I'll go through commencement in May and finish my degree over the summer with more internship... maybe a "real" class if there's something that I just can't resist.   So, I'm going to have to spend some time in the shop over the next month to get some projects out. That should be fun, although it was 23 degrees this morning. I better make sure that heater works.

Thoughts on banner ads...

This http://blog.pelland.com/?tag=banner-ads got me thinking.  You guys really were doing a good job.  According to that article, the average click through rate is about 0.2%.  One of my blogs had about 500% click through a couple of times and each had about 100% click through- so I can see why AdSense thought something was fishy.   The article also confirmed my gut reaction- people don't really like banner ads.  According to the article, 94% of people dislike banners, just 1% less than the number of people who hate pop-up ads.  Wow.    So even if AdSense reactivates my account, I probably won't reactivate the ads.  I have a hard enough time keeping any semblance of respectabiltiy, I don't need to shoot myself in the foot on top of it.