The old timers at the county fair taught me more about fire control than any YouTube video

I keep seeing folks online cranking their propane forges to max to get metal hot fast. They end up with a burnt, sparking mess that eats up good steel. It matters because you're wrecking the grain structure before you even start to hammer. I learned this the hard way about 8 years ago, ruining a perfectly good piece of 1084 trying to make a knife blank. An old guy named Frank, who ran a demo at the Ohio State Fair, saw me doing it and just shook his head. He walked over, turned my regulator down to about 5 psi, and said, 'You want a nice orange, not a screaming white.' The difference in how the metal moved under the hammer was night and day. Anyone else have a simple tip they picked up from someone in person that changed their whole approach?

2 comments

2 Comments

troyjackson9d ago

You said you crank it up to save time, but that's the thing. It's like rushing anything else, you just end up making a bigger mess and wasting more time fixing it.

joelsanchez9d ago

Is it really that big of a deal if the steel sparks a little? I've cranked mine up before to save time and the stuff still got hot enough to work. Maybe some steels can take the heat better than others, what were you using?