With some more thought about lid removal, I decided to make it a two-man lift, or a one man lift, or a notched handle that is a hinge. The angle iron is picking up 6 of the 10 bricks. There will be a hinging mechanism that will be locked on to the dog bone bar. The bars on each end are free spinning. Not a lot of time on my hands since, that thing work keeps getting in the way... but, I did have time to spin up these eight clamping clamping washers from stainless steel that are 3/4 diameter x 1” long, as I don’t want to weld if I want adjustablility. I drilled them out with letter “O” drill(0.316), and now I will mill them to be somewhat of a beam clamp for a 5/16 screw.
Matt The furnace is looking great. The light weight mobile design gives you many options. At this rate I would be surprised if you do not melt mettle before I do. i made it back out to the shop tonight. After air drying The sample was showing deformation at 10 Lb psi. The deformation was slight and cushioned. It was very light. I placed the 4 gram sample of wool + dried slurry in the heat treat oven and brought it up to 1800F After cooling the sample failed at just over 5 psi. When it failed it was a total failure that turned quickly to fine partials. I did not bring a scale nor camera tonight and the remains of the sample were promptly disposed of. I do have the non dissolved grog in a container. I will dry this out, weigh it to determine the total weight gain of the sample. I believe this would be a usable weight to compression ratio. After firing the material has poor abrasion resistance. I have made some progress on the burner slide and lid lift leaver assembly. It is now very close to ready for a test run. Before I plan on putting it into service I have to clean and modify a shed. It is the dreaded shed of quality stuff ... “junk”. I have been slowly digging my way down in the pile and found my old foundry bench. I hope to find a couple of flask in it. One less thing to build before getting started. Joe
Joe just keep plugging at it a little bit every day. That’s what I do. I somewhat finalized my lid opening device, and I wanted to update this thread. After my trial lighting, I might add a extension handle.