I cranked up my NC Tools gas forge yesterday and noticed several problems with it--Three of the six burners were not working well or not at all and while I was using it (fortunately, I was done with the small task at hand) flames starting coming out of the top where the burners enter the body. Also, there was a small broken piece in the box that looked to be made of some sort of ceramic material. It was cylindrical with a hole through it. My guess is is part of the burner, but on the NC Tools site none of the forge parts look like it. Also, how do you tell if the forge needs relining? The bottom is covered with a black coating, flux I think. It was used in a demo and the demonstrator was trying to forge weld. Tried many times, but it didn't work, so a lot of flux got in the box. Does this affect performance?

So, is anyone there experience with working on these things? I don't feel confident in taking the burners apart to see what is wrong. I have "tuned" it in the past and tuning may be the problem with some of them. "Tuning" consisted of loosening and tightening the bolts at the top and wiggling/tapping the burners until they worked better. But the flames from the top and the unidentified ceramic piece have me worried. Any advice or a reference for someone to repair it? I really prefer gas and would like to get it back running ASAP.

Linda

Linda,

don't know anything about NC Tool gas furnaces. But, you may want to go to the enamel supply house ThomsonEnamel.com. You can buy a floor liner mat to cover up the flux layer, so things don't stick to it at high temperature. They also sell a furnace cement for re-lining.

Dietrich

Linda: I am not a gas forge expert. I have a NC gas forge that has never been anything but hot when I ran the pressure up. Never any leakage of flame.

What I did not hear at all in your request was any indication of gas pressure that you are using. Do you have a pressure gauge? What did it show when you were experiencing problems? If three burners are operating and three are not, could there be a blockage? A ceramic tube is used in shielding thermocouple wires. Have you been using a thermocouple?

Once I had a problem with the burners on my barbeque grill. Over a long down period spiders had built webs that restricted gas or air flow. Compressed air solved the problem.

Hope your problem is soon solved. John

Thanks guys. I'll be tackling it in a couple of days after Rick takes the forge off the transmission jack I have it on and moves it to my workbench. I'll let you know how it goes.

Added 24 days later:

To all who offered advice, I finally got all six burners up and running, after much cursing and some blood (the sheet metal has sharp corners!). Just to demonstrate my ability to make everything harder than it needs to be, I took the thing completely apart. I thought the burner orifices would be in the tubes, so I took all of the tubes out. Only then did I notice that the orifices were in the square bar at the top. Took the orifices out, but they looked clean. Blew out the tube, there was a little rust, but very little. Then put it all back together, but lining up the orifices with the tubes was a bitch, since you can't see the orifice when you do it. I also noticed that when you take the tubes off, a ratchet won't fit and you can only get about an eighth of a turn on a wrench. So disassembling and reassembling took hours, leading to much cussing. I also cracked the lining on the top, but it held together and seems to work fine. The flame on the top was from the quick-light. There is a hole in one of the tubes for it and since the ceramic part cracked and fell off, it left an open hole in the tube. The quick light stopped working shortly after I got the forge so I light it manually. I'll look for something to plug the hole, so that should be solved. I was really amazed when I put it all back together and it actually worked with no additional fiddling.

Thanks to all that offered advice!

Linda

Added 2 minutes later:

One thing I noticed is that there is no mark on the bar to use to line up the orifices with the tubes. If I ever take the bar and orifices out again, I'll mark the tube where I can see it to line up the orifices with the middle of the tube.

Thanks Dan, I'll try again soon to forge weld, but I couldn't get it hot enough even when the forge was new. But that could be my fault and lack of practice, although I have successfully forge welded in various classes.