The Shop > Metal Stuff
Oil fired crucible furnace
vtsteam:
I'm going to be firing this baby up for the first time in 7 years tomorrow. :zap:
tom osselton:
Should be fun our season is over I’m afraid.
vtsteam:
Both my furnaces could use re-lining after living unused for a couple years outdoors. I did fire the plaster-lined propane furnace and did a few brass and zinc castings with it last month (mentioned in my lathe thread) But brass is too difficult to cast now in December -- last two tries were cold shorts. Cause was mainly low outdoor temperatures leading to low furnace temperature (also due to a somewhat deteriorated lining) and low greensand temperatures. Well, that plus a poured part with thin sections. Zinc and aluminum are still fine to melt in it though.
I didn't get around to firing the oil fired iron furnace after all, and ended up moving the foundries around and organizing my lean-to casting space. If I'm to cast brass in winter I'll need to do it in the oil furnace with it's much higher output burner, and thicker insulation. But also I want to cast iron again. So it also needs re-lining.
This time I've decided to bite the bullet and re-line with ceramic insulating blanket and reflective coating ala Ironman. The spare money is available, and I am finally able to buy the esoteric hard coating (which was unavailable before -- at least to non-commercial buyers like me). This should (I hope) heat up faster, and be better insulation against the winter cold. We'll see. The blanket insulation arrived today, but the coating is delayed -- supposedly arriving later in the week.
The iron will be for castings for an engine I want to build. Really looking forward to seeing how this new lining works out! :dremel:
vtsteam:
It was fairly warm out today for this time of year, so I made a start on the new lining for the oil fired iron furnace. After scraping away the cap, of sand and fire clay mix, The top layer of fire bricks were revealed. They looked in very good condition.
vtsteam:
Removing the firebricks. The sand and clay mix was quite crumbly. The fire bricks were somewhat weakened by the iron melts, and had hairline cracks, but were all substantially intact, and would have probably lasted for many more years, from the looks of it. There was no surface degradation or disintegration at all.
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