After hours and hours and days and days of YouTube.. I am taking this time of COVID19..to create, build, learn, and share a skill I always wished I had. My son ( 13yrs old ) and I have taken out first steps. Used a metal well expansion tank ( using the propane tank model ) and started out . Supplies used and purchased. 20 lbs of Satinite 20 lbs of Kast O Lite 30 2 inch thick , 6 foot roll of Kaowool I built and tested a Venturi type propane burner with a 30psi adjustable regulator Items were purchased from High Heat Tools inc. Lots of information on this blog..WOW! I found this site while googling . I live pretty much away from any large population... So suplies must be mailed. And I need to try to be as deliberately as possible to save time and money. The base of the forge has been laid,. And is drying now. I need to learn to make tongs, holders, a crucible etc. I have a forge built out of square stock and lined with refractory castable. For my metal work. I am trying to compliment it with a kiln/ smelter/ melt. For soft metal up to 2600° Well..that's that in a paragraph. I am trying to learn the terms and proper words for blacksmith. I also have a YouTube channel.. Respectfully, Noob. Ben from Maine
Hi Ben, welcome to the forum. You came to the right place and it sounds like you are well on your way. There is a lot of info on YouTube. Some of it is great, but a LOT of it is nonsense. A site like this will help you sort out the good from the bad. You have more than enough refractory materials to build your furnace. If it were me I would probably make your furnace floor with the Kast-o-lite (an insulating castable refractory if I recall correctly), line the walls and lid with 2" of ceramic fiber blanket, and coat the blanket with maybe 1/4 of the satanite you have. You can make a few plinths with the left over castable. Other than the fact that I made the floor from satanite coated insulating firebricks (IFB'S) instead of an insulating castable, that is how I built my newest furnace (link to build thread). Right down to using an old well water pressure tank for the outer shell! The satanite made it by far the easiest to build of my 3 furnaces, because the stuff is so easy to apply and so forgiving. That furnace also gets by far my fastest melt times when starting from cold (almost always in my case). The wall would be susceptible to abrasion and some occasional cracking, but you've got more than enough satanite for any occasional patching it may need. IMO it is the ideal way to go for building a melting furnace for hobbyist scale use. Alternatively, you could cast a thin wall of Kast-o-lite on the hot side of the ceramic fiber lined wall, floor and lid. I have not worked with insulating castables, just the dense kind, but from what I understand 3/4 to 1" of that would be a great deal more durable than 1/4" of satanite, but probably not quite as quick to heat up. Insulating castables fall somewhere between IFB's or ceramic fiber blanket and dense castable refractory in terms of both how fast they get up to temperature and how much punishment they can take. Building the forms, mixing the castable as dry as it wants to be, ramming or vibrating it into place, slow drying it, then slow firing it can be fun, but it is a lot of time consuming work. You could also just skip the blanket and go with all kast-o-lite, but that's a whole lot of castable and a pretty heavy furnace to deal with... The formwork would be easier than a fiber blanket and castable build though. Food for thought anyhow. You'll find lots of good examples here to steal ideas from! Don't forget to post your YT channel here so we can take a look at what kind of stuff you do: http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/members-video-channels.188/ Jeff
Welcome Ben. There are a few members here that are sticklers for proper terminology so let me say a few words about that. Forge and furnace are NOT interchangeable words, a forge is what a blacksmith or farrier uses to heat metal, a furnace is what foundrymen use to melt metal, also smelting is the process of turning raw ore into usable metal, very few of us here actually smelt, what we do is melt metal for casting.
Welcome Ben, Jeff covered a lot of territory, and the youtube advise is very true. Do you have a welder? It would be quite handy if you do because making the needed tools almost requires it. Although you can look at Myfordboy on YouTube to see not only good casting practice, but also a number of necessary tools made without welding. He's a riveter. (Or is that rivetor?). You can find a lot of shared experience with casting tools here and on AlloyAvenue.com which is another casting site many of us are active on. Good luck to you and your son. PPE is number one! No shortcuts (or short pants!). Oh, I almost forgot, pictures or it didn't happen! Pete
Welcome Ben! To the forum. Thats a good age(I started messing with foundry stuff at 12), and you are going to work him right? If you have a welder that stuff is pretty easy. Patrick
I have mostly used steel crucibles but there is a lot be said for building around a proper crucible if finances allow. Particularly if you get into brass/bronze territory which is tempting but handling something the texture of a pancake, full of 5lbs of brass makes you re-consider footware.... Terminology isn't a big deal here but as above, it's a furnace and such, don't worry, Jason is to busy killing a Bridgeport and a lathe to be destracted at the moment, it isn't eye fudge iron, just a nice bunch of guys with way too much experience.
WOW.. Ok..I will add a few picts. Thank you, Mr Jeff and Rocco and others. I am a retired Marine, of 20+ yrs. I am also a winner of an IED argument..so I got metal legs and back.. heavy lifting is not my intent. My son and I will respect the PPE Safety . Safety is Paramount. Saved my life. To be clear..I do not own or operate a welder. I have No SKill in it. ( Bucket list ) Last week I took an old 18x12 metal camp stove, lined it with brick n Refractory mortar. . It works..but I didn't really get what I want out of it. So I now I am in the beginning stages of a propane furnace. I cut a well tank in have..etc and copied the typical YouTube modle on line. The lid is to be created tomorrow. Father and son project..plus I am expecting a 5 inch snow storm.. I am gonna try to upload my forge and my beginning stages.of my furnace. I thank you all VERY much. Here .. Respectfully Ben Ricard Frankfort Maine
No time like the present! You can start with steel or cast iron for a crucible but you need to keep your burner from directly impinging on it. Setting it up on a plinth (pedestal) made of refractory so it's slightly above the flame entrance (tuyere, pronounced tweer) is the way it's usually done. Otherwise you can easily burn right through it, especially if your burning too lean. After the casting bug has truely bitten you then you may want to get a proper crucible and lifting tools. If you consider this route be sure to put a drain hole in the bottom of your furnace for if and when the crucible fails. One of the few advantages of using a steel crucible is that you can use any number of easily found or easily made tools to lift and pour. Not so with a ceramic crucible though. I've made many steel ones out of 1lb propane cans. The short fat ones for camping. Shoot a hole through it very near the top with a .22, fill it with water to evacuate residual gas, and cut the top off with an angle grinder. If you have thicker alternatives it would be better though. It's not the optimal way to cast but it can get you going. Pete
Make sure you have a good understanding of how to tune your burner if you are going to use those thin walled camp stove propane bottles as crucibles - I managed to hole one out on its first melt and flood my furnace with molten aluminum by unknowingly running a highly oxidizing furnace back in my newbie days... Welded steel pipe crucibles would last me more like a month back then, but once I learned how to control my furnace properly, the next (last) steel crucible lasted for years and is still sound. But I only use real ones now. When I built my well water pressure tank furnace I made sure it would fit my #12 crucible (maybe just a little tight if I use the waste oil burner but definitely a good fit with propane). But since I built it I have almost only ever used my #6's. That's a suitable size for most of the stuff I have been casting over the past year or so, and not so small that it makes my furnace seem oversized (like the #12 does in my big furnace). If you decide to prioritize using "real" crucibles over figuring out welding, I have found that a set of those 3-finger fireplace log tongs makes a great off the shelf combination liftout tongs and pouring shank for my #6 crucibles. Probably some other sizes close to that as well, though I have only used it with #6's. A little bending of the fingers (its, not yours) may be in order, but was not necessary in my case. Pix of my no-weld fire log tongshank can be found in this post. Jeff
Welcome aboard Ben. You've already received some good advice from the forum members. Welding is certainly a helpful skill for a home foundry man, but there are plenty of ways to build and adapt tools and some good examples of tongs and shanks to the Foundry Tools and Flasks subforum if you haven't already taken those in. After melting and handling molten metal, pattern and mold materials will be next up and you'll have some choices to make there as well. -The journey has just begun. Best, Kelly
Welcome Ben, from a fellow Mainer! Relatively speaking, we're practically neighbors. I've been casting for a while, I'd be more than happy to help you and your son along. Since you are basically right across the river from me, after all this virus crap has blown over I'd be more than happy to show you and your son my setup, maybe even have a melt. Let me know, either PM me here, or my email address is oddduckfoundry(at)msn(dot)com. I also occasionally do demos and classes at a couple of the living history museums up here. My foundry isn't much to look at, but it works.
