Another keg furnace

Discussion in 'Furnaces and their construction' started by joe yard, Feb 16, 2018.

  1. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    You know, it would not have been that bad but my wife came home the same day with an “exercise” machine from the junk store.
    Joe
     
    Jason likes this.
  2. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Dude, if I would have let me wife keep all those devices, I could have started a museum of useless junk. Why cant they sell stuff like welders, grinders and other cool tools at 2am on tv?
     
  3. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    I will be back soon... As in I was hit with more repairs and general life related work not to mention the honey do list that all but put a stop to any meaningful progress and seriously put into question my self imposed date of the 4th of July.
    The good news is things are slowly coming around and I will soon be back on the furnace.
    At this point it is time to consider refractory material. My original thoughts was an old contact in the foundry business. Unfortunately for me I found he has decided to take a well earned retirement. I wish him the best!
    I will be ordering the wool in the next couple of days leaving only the refractory cement.
    Now comes the BIG BIG very questionable part.
    I have within arms reach many cubic foot of old blow in “asbestos” insulation, yes the worst type.
    I could, mix it in with the refractory cement and make a very light refractory mix to be faced with an inch +/- or uncut refractory on the exposed side. It would have many advantages but then again! Would you even consider this?
    The other question is it worth it to crush your own porcelain? I have a 3/4 HP garden mulcher that I bought used 30 years ago and never used. I had considered donating it to the good will but then decided to see if I could use it for a light hammer mill. I think I could easily crush 2 toilets an hour to dried pea size or 1 to beach sand. For now I do not have a lot of use for crushed porcelain but that could very likely change as things progress.

    Joe
     
  4. Jason

    Jason Gold

  5. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    Hi Jason
    It is not the price of the wool that is the issue. It is the texture /mass. The asbestosis has a texture like heavy cellulose paper insulation. If not for the health issue. It looks to have a lot of potential in mixing with refractory cement for insulation and structural reasons. At this time it is just a question of its potential for mixing with castable refractory for pouting a furnace in sections prior to a hot face. This is not to say that price is not an issue. I am cheap!
    I will be ordering a role of wool today 2inch x 24inch x 25 foot for this project but am thinking of the future. Unfortunately my keg furnace has a fatal flaw. It will not have the annular space to properly burn used oil. To use oil will reacquire a total redesign of a burn chamber under the keg changing everything so at this point I will drive on and make it a gas burner for the tween metals but I had originally intended on the burning of oil.
    The liner and keg come together in an unforseen way and I could not resist building this one but I could see from the start it was not quite what I wanted. Now after learning a bit from those on the form and a bit of research. I can see this furnace will be a stepping stone to something more custom to my needs.

    Joe
     
  6. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    You could just buy an insulating type of refractory such as kast-o-lite 30, rather than adding asbestos to a denser refractory with possibly unpredictable results. Just a thought...

    Jeff
     
  7. Petee716

    Petee716 Gold Banner Member

    I can't see the asbestos doing anything but degrading the structural integrity of the refractory. It may help with insulation but if you've already got 2" wool behind it, I doubt it will add enough to make it worth a weakened furnace. Given that you're going to use propane insulation will be helpful so building with an insulating commercial refractory like the kastolite30 Jeff mentioned is probably a better way to go. Someone else has already done the R&D and it works.

    Pete
     
  8. Peedee

    Peedee Silver

    I'm no safety nazi but the minute asbestos lagging is even touched over here the spacemen in white suits seal building from top to bottom in polythene and vacumn or dipose of anything in the remote area. May be a bit OTT but enough to put me off going near it.
     
  9. Jason

    Jason Gold

    You guys have seen those 2 twits in Waco that renovate houses on TV right? They just got their peepees spanked BIG TIME by the EPA. Yup, you guessed it! ASSBESTOS!
    That's the price you pay for dealing with old houses. Proper, legal asbestos abatement is NOT CHEAP and the fines are 10x worse!:eek:
     
  10. Peedee

    Peedee Silver

    I did some work for a guy who went from rags to owning his own helicopter and pad just by setting up a removal firm in the 80's.
     
    Jason likes this.
  11. Jason

    Jason Gold

    I totally believe that. The stuff is bad, but seeing the hoopla and shows these removal companies put on remind me of that scene in ET when they bagged that house. I mean come on! The pollution in the streets of china has to be way worse.
     
  12. It is airborne asbestos which is the hazard. If you wet it and then create concrete it is bound up unless you grind the concrete. It would probably make a great insulating additive to concrete. I still have asbestos siding on my house and love it. A few years ago it was still legal for you to do your own asbestos removal, not for hire to others. That may have changed but I doubt it. After you double bag it, it goes to any landfill. If I had it, the best way to get rid of it would be to make concrete with it. Just dampen it before you start mixing, wear a respirator, and wash your clothes afterward. I've never been a licensed asbestos handler but hired them and worked with them on lots of projects. It is not rocket science, just don't breathe the fibers and don't handle fired ceramic fiber either.
     
  13. Petee716

    Petee716 Gold Banner Member

    I saw it go the other way for a company that renovated a hotel across the street from my shop. They just finished the project and had the 4story building (Days Inn) along with a couple acres of new asphalt as well as refurbished fuel station geared toward interstate traffic. Lots of deisel pumps, restaurant, and rest for truckers. Attached to it was a large older bowling ally. One night the bowling ally roof gave way to the snowload. During the cleanup which involved asbestos they got a visit from OSHA. Long story short, the hotel was razed along with every other structure on the property, fuel tanks removed, and an acre's worth of soil 4 feet deep removed from the site for fuel contamination remediation.
    Improperly protected employees started a domino effect that ended with a brownfield that no one will touch and millions down the drain.
     
  14. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    I definitely never found a left-over asbestos-wrapped pipe from the house's old hot water radiator heating system that had been disconnected several decades ago running across my basement ceiling, soaked it with water, peeled it out of there and off the pipe, double bagged it, and put it out in the trash on the next Tuesday instead of calling in the hazmat-suited government scientists from the end of E.T. to make a big expensive hassle for me.

    That would have been wrong...

    Just don't ask where the chunk of pipe I used to mount my muller's scrapers onto the frame came from, 'cause I have no recollection of that particular detail...

    Jeff
     
    Jason likes this.
  15. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    I made it out to the shop tonight but did more cleaning than work. I did make some progress though small.
    I cut the 4 inch hole that will be in the lid. The disk has a ½ x 1 1/4 inch deep lip that will make a nice heat seal. The disk is 2 inch thick total. I plan on anchoring that to the S.S. T.I.G. wires, covering with 3 inches of wool then I plan on tacking the dome back on the top.
    I also rasp out the burner channel where the 4 x 2 cutout was. This furnace will not take a lot of refractory and there would be no reason to consider asbestos. I will have to fill the 5 inch hole in the side, clean up around the burner hole and a base.
    This is rather soft brick. It cut with some difficulty with a hack saw. It did not know it was in the lath. I will put on a thin hot face over the entire surface, thicker over the burner impingement.
    Being the Devil advocate around here 25 % of the houses are either sided with, insulated with or both. Every one in the military of the day was surrounded by it. Its all around us. I would think a great improvement would be to mix it with cement and then seal that in a coat of cement, when compared to the warnings on keg1.JPG keg22.JPG keg33.JPG keg44.JPG used ceramic wool. The shipping is more than the refractory cement.
    It is way past late.
    Joe
     
  16. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    I NEED SOME ADVICE / HELP BADLY!
    Well guys now comes the part where there is no going back and it is the part where any advice on working with what I have will be greatly appreciated!
    As I have mentioned I am building from what I can find both in materials / information off the net and from those on the forum.
    The chamber lining I.D. measures 8.5 wide by 14 inches tall. My plan at this time is to build a Styrofoam forum consisting of a 12 inch O.D. 8 inch I.D. doughnut shape. Cutting the I.D. to 8.5 or larger inches then placing an 8.5 + X 4 inch Styrofoam cylinder centered in the doughnut with a 3/4 inch PVC pipe centered for a drain, gluing on a 2 inch piece for the burner tawnier, centering that in the bottom of the keg 1.5 inch above the S.S. bottom then flooding with heavy refractory.
    This will give me a just over 1 ½ inch thick wall before the S.S. Of dense refractory but no further insulation at the bottom of the burn chamber and sides for the first 2 inches . Is this a bad idea ?

    The next question is. The chamber if built as planed will have side walls 14 inches above the burn chamber but only have an I.D. of 8.5 inches as is or up to 10 inches if expanded to maximum. I can stretch that by filling in between the bricks to make it 9.25 inches and still leave enough room for the 2 inches of wool. This is what I am thinking I will do. The real question is.
    Should I expand the chamber beyond 9.25 inches? The maximum practical I.D. would be to take it out to 10 inches. This would make the side walls of the chamber 1.25 inch of insulation refractory just over 1.25 inch of wool. The I.D. of the chamber will end up slightly smaller than above mentioned as I plan on at least a thin coating of hot face over the insulation brick.

    The question of a sump area below the burn tawnier? The plan is to extend the Styrofoam 3/4 +/-
    below the Styrofoam doughnut and tawnier then place the 3/4 inch drain hole in the middle.


    The next question. Are my side walls to tall for this I.D. chamber? I plan on making it a 3 piece furnace where the burn chamber will remain stationary and the top and sides will lift.


    And the last question of the night. With the barrel of the furnace lifting and no need for lifting tools to go between the side and crucible. How much room do I need?

    PLEASE any advice is greatly appreciate. I plan on pouring everything within 1 week if all goes well.
     
  17. Jason

    Jason Gold

    OMG, all those numbers are making my head hurt at 4am... and I just got done typing 2 pages of stuff for Zap. With that I'm out for now. Sorry bud. What's the largest crucible you are planning to use?

    On a lighter note... ANOTHER friggen exercise machine showed up my house this week!!! WTF? The last one cost me almost 260bucks is sitting in the foyer now with an ad in the paper for it. She's asking 165 FIRM. (really??) I told her let's cut the arms off it and turn it into a sex chair. She'd burn more calories with my method. She swears up and down, this latest piece of chinese junk is the last one she will ever want. I'm so pissed my local Curves closed down. If they needed money, I would have bought her a few years worth at once. It got her out of the house and let me putz in the garage and she was enjoying herself. I knew I should have rented a storage unit and collected this junk. I would have been the perfect museum curator for this stuff.

    The last 2am purchase.
    ab-doer-360-fitness-system-with-resistance-band-kit-d-2017072512312584~548969.jpg

    And the latest joke that showed up. Nice ass.
    51529517_Alt04.jpeg
     
  18. I was having trouble following your arithmetic. Suffice to say you need space around the crucible for flame to go, others can speak more intelligently, but I would think at least an inch for propane and 2 inches for oil. And, you don't want flame hitting your crucible directly.

    Hope everything goes smoothly.
     
  19. Al2O3

    Al2O3 Administrator Staff Member Banner Member

    Joe, might help if you sketch what you are considering with dimensions and post a picture of the sketches.

    Best,
    Kelly
     
  20. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    I attempted to make a drawing with paint. I hope it helps explain a bit.
    I plan on making a Styrofoam forum to be burnt out later, then casting dense refractory around the Styrofoam leaving drain at the center.

    This will give me a base burn chamber that is 12 inches acres by 2 deep. The barrel will set on top of that. If I were to use an A10 crucible I would only have a 1.75 inch side clearance at he top and a 2.75 side clearance at the bottom. It would be 5 inches above the burn chamber, 2 inches from the lid.

    An A20 would only have .5 top side clearance although this could be easily stretched to .75 inch.
    Joe keg burner.png
     

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