melting furnace

[Don Halter]

A visit to the scrap yard, hardware store, and a little scrounging in the shop and a new furnace is born. I'll be casting non-ferrous viking/saxon knife/sword hardware using this. I acidentally melted the bottom out of my first stainless crucible, though! No shortage of heat...that's for sure! Click on the pic below to see the other pics.

[Jamey Saunders]

Don, have you looked at http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com yet? They have a lot of info on building melting furnaces. I think you may have melted the bottom out of your stainless crucible because you've got the flame pointed directly at it. If you bring your burner in from the side at a tangent to the inner wall so the fire will "swirl" around the inside, you won't kill your crucibles as fast.

Looks good, though. I've got one in the works, but haven't been able to work on it for almost a year. It's much bigger, though. Made mine from a 55-gallon drum.

[Don Halter]

Yeah, that's a pretty neat site. I wanted the fire directly at the crucible. I can move the tube in/out depending on size of crucible to adjust where the heat is as well. It works great until you put the empty crucible back and don't turn off or turn down the flame! I'm making a bigger one (about 25 gallon drum) for melting steel in clay crucibles. It'll have two burners and be blower driven. I've got together with a few others and copied all the tech articles done by Mr. Pendray and team for wootz. That will be part of what the big'n will be for. I want to cast some steel smithing/armouring stakes as well.

And of course the real driving reason for making one...melting stuff is fun.

[Jamey Saunders]

Since a lot of my acquaintances (my dad and his buddies) restore old tractors, they are always needing something cast in cast iron. I've been itching to build a cupola furnace for doing that. 200 pounds of cast iron an hour will cast a pretty big part.

[Don Halter]

I'd love to make one of those! We're usually under a burn ban for all but a couple weeks during the summer and it rains all fall and spring, so I'm a little hesitant to build one. If you make one, I'll be sure and swing by with a few molds if I'm up that direction, though!

[whv]

looks like fun, don. pardon my ignorance, but it appears that getting the pot out of the furnace would be a pain unless you had a helper, no? you forge guys have all the neat tools, though, you probably have just the one for that.
thanx

[Don Halter]

The crucible here is only 3.5" across and 3" deep, so it doesn't weigh much. I just use a pair of long tongs that have been bent a bit on the end to grab the bars sticking out on th eedge of the crucible. When I make the bigger version, I'll need more specialized handlers and possibly a helper depending how much metal is being melted. Several pounds of something fluid and hot can be a pain to handle!

[whv]

gotcha. thanx again. i understand hot fluids ~212*, but don't even want to confront problems at 2000*