Gene, I am not sure how long it would take to do a taper that long. I have tapered some pipe but never any pieces that long.

I guess it would depend on the tool you built and the control your hammer has also. Pipe is pretty thin and loses heat pretty fast. Getting it too hot is not good either. You need some resistance to make it work right and close up.

Steve

Gene,

I use a tool similar the one Steve showed, though a bit less elegant. (Ralph makes nice tools!)

It took me about five or six heats and a half an hour or so to taper four feet of 1-1/2" down to 3/4" a while ago. I would think that tapering 2" down to 1-1/2" would take about the same time. I found that the limiting factor was the length of pipe that I could conveniently heat at one time in my forge. If I had used the big four-burner forge, I cuold have heated twice as much at a stretch, and cut the time down. I run the hammer pretty fast on a short stroke when tapering pipe, so I get plenty of hits in to work up to 18" or so at a heat. The pipe moves pretty quickly in the right tapering die.

I have found that Sch80 is nicer to work with than Sch40 for tapering. The thicker wall provides more resistance so you can control displacement better.