Something to think about...

...the dignity and importance of the smith's art is at once apparent. While others besides him use hammers, it is to the smith that they all must go for their hammers.

-Richardson

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Stupid simple propane burner

This is a small, naturally aspirated propane burner that I just finished. It runs like a top on 10 p.s.i., and can probably handle more. It combines features from a number of other designs. The best thing about it is that it requires no drilling or tapping at all. In fact it could be made entirely without power tools. Of course electricty makes things easier.






















































UPDATE: After observing the burner for a while and doing some additional reading, I think the propane jet should be much deeper into the tube, more like so:






More to follow, once I've had a chance to test this theory.

3 comments:

hill said...

Can't wait to try this one out, Matt. Thanks for the thorough plans.

Todd

azmike said...

Matt, have you gotten it up to welding temps yet? good info and i may try one too--needing to upgrade my forge.

The Backyard Smithy said...

Mike, no. So far I've only fired it in open air. One important safety improvement on this thing so far: don't use soft solder on the MIG tip. Silver solder/braze it. Apparently this sort of design can get pretty warm, and it'd be real exciting to suddenly have your orifice go from .035" to 0.25" at 10 or 20 pounds of pressure.

The alternative is to replace the 1/4" pipe and compression fitting with a 1/8" pipe. You can tap the inside with a 1/4-28 NF tap, no drilling required, and thread the MIG tip (or at least a lot of MIG tips) straight into that. Slightly more work that way, but it probably makes for a better burner. More to follow.