Jumbo Coin Casting/Soule Steam Festival/Ursutz Burner/Bound Sand Molds

"Porositymaster" is the guy in the photo above.

I like to watch one of our member's videos (cae2100), located here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYCuE8KFwaIgG76kPTVR5jA/videos
because he digs into old machines and rebuilds them from the ground up, he does castings, and we have a lot of common interests.
And as you mentioned, he has some great Soule and other show videos.

 

That looks like a good time. I'm really busy in Nov so I'm out.

 

Pat, which day do you think would be the best. Friday would work for me but I would hate the traffic in Birmingham. Do people start packing up at noon on Saturday to leave? Seems to be the way at shows around here.
I'm going to try to come down, probably be by myself.

 

People are pretty good about staying until late Saturday afternoon.
Most exhibitors are official museum volunteers (myself included), and they have assigned duties and a rigid schedule that they keep.
I think late Saturday is when the iron pour begins (check me on that), so many visitors remain for that too.

Friday is basically school kids day, although I think pretty much everyone is set up and ready to exhibit Friday morning at 9:00 A.M.
Saturday is the larger crowds.

The Soule site says 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on Friday and Saturday.
It would be great to see some fellow casters.
I think cae2100 will be there with some of his steam engine castings.

I plan on driving down Thursday, since it will take me a couple of hours to get set up.
I also want to try and stay for the iron pour, and I think I can do that.

 

Thank so much for posting all those photos! I love to go to those steam festivals in Australia but the next time I visit the U.S.A. I will go to that festival!

 

You are welcome.
I love the gas engine and steam festivals; I wish there were more that were close.

If you visit the US and go to that festival, please come by the house and show me how to melt iron.
I am not too far from the festival (4 hour drive).

We could have a good chat for sure.

Edit:
cae2100 has two new Algonquin videos he just put up; located here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYCuE8KFwaIgG76kPTVR5jA/videos

Lots of nice engines at that show.
Had it been closer, I would have attended.

 

I met Porositymaster at the last Iron Pour I went to at Tannehill Furnace. I left them some alloys I had. I can bring some alloys if anyone wants some. I'll have to make up a list of what I have. Still have a lot of pure Manganese and some Chrome. I have a little Ni Mg 3 for ductile Iron but I'm kind of stingy with that.
I'll get a list together.

 

Porositymaster has gotten really good with the iron, and he definitely has the method down, as well as the burner.

Oddly enough he uses an external burner, which I would have thought would not work well.
I tried an external burner, and I tried for two days, and could not get it hot enough to melt anything, so they are tricky, and not particularly stable either.
If they puddle and then flash on you, you can get a 20 foot flame out the end, and you better be ready for that if you ever try one of them.

And external burners don't last any time at all, since the metal gets red hot, and then oxidizes heavily (unless you make them from stainless steel).

I will stick with my trusty siphon-nozzle; at least it is stable and easily adjustable.

I have not gotten into the exotic metal stuff; I really want to use almost all iron for the things I cast.

What does the NiMg3 do?

 

NiMg3 is an inoculant. You have to get the Iron very hot and then push the right amount of NiMg3 down into the crucible to allow it to bubble up through the iron. Then you have to pour into the mold pretty quickly. Causes the carbon to become spheroidal and makes ductile Iron. If you pour any into ingots and remelt it the Magnesium will burn out and it will no longer be ductile.
Now Ironsides has me looking for some FerroPhos. I have been doing some more research on the Phosphorous Iron Chemistry, Found a couple interesting things. Makes me wish I still had access to a Spectrometer.

 

Pat Porositymaster is one of my subscribers on my youtube channel. He is a clever person, he can melt cast iron without much help from me. If I was you I would be copying everything he does with his furnace including the glumpy burner.

Hmmm There seems to be several compelling reasons why I need to visit the US 1. drop by your place and have a chat about melting iron 2. watch porositymaster pour some iron 3. visit Soule steam festival. 4. visit Justin in Texas. Maybe I should move there
permanently as there is so much to see and do.

 

I agree, you need to move here, preferably within a 1/2 hour drive of my place.
There are probably far too many wallabies down there for your liking anyway.

I tried an external burner.
No luck at all.
It was larger than porositymaster's burner.
Building an external burner, and making it work in a furnace are two entirely different things.
While they may produce a big flame in open air, they don't necessarily do that when connected to a furnace, and I have found that they are very difficult to control in any meaningful way, and I am not just saying that because I dislike that style burner, but I say that after two solid days of adjusting and cursing "the thing" as I call it. I also have some other words for it, but won't repeat them here.

Porositymaster has said that he has made several hundred successful of iron melts, and I believe him.
He has it down very well, and makes it look easy, but its not.

Unfortunately I cannot duplicate his burner exactly because my furnace is larger, and my external burner is also larger.
The burner must be made from stainless steel if it is going to last any time at all, and the temperature of that thing glowing red hot right next to the furnace makes for extremely hot work.
Insulating an external burner would most likely cause it to melt. Perhaps a heat shield if you just had to use one.

An external burner basically is a big pulsa-jet, aka the V-1 rocket engine.
If you take away the ease of lighting, stability, adjustability and safety of the siphon nozzle, what you have left is an external burner.
I started it with the brick removed, and inserted the brick once it got going. If the thing puddles and then flashes, you are going to have a very bad situation, such as a 20 foot geyser of flame. You better hope you are not near it when it does that.

Since scavenger has good luck with his siphon nozzle burner, and I have had some success with my siphon nozzle burner with melting iron, then I think it is just a matter of finding the correct fuel and air adjustments that produce the maximum heat in the furnace. My problem is I can't judge by looking which setting is hotter than any other setting, and thus the idea to use thermocouples behind the hot face to measure those temperatures.

I think if a reliable and easily adjustable external burner were to be made, it would have to somehow be a marriage of an external burner and a siphon nozzle, which would be tricky because siphon nozzles don't like the amount of heat that the external burner produces.

Having built and attempted to use an external burner, and witnessed the amount of scale that flaked off the exterior of it in a two day period (made from mild steel), plus the extreme radiated heat, I am more than glad to go back to a siphon nozzle burner.

I have had several good iron pours with a siphon nozzle burner, and so it is not a matter of if a siphon nozzle burner will work for iron, but rather finding a consistent and repeatable settings for various crucible sizes.

Below is the external burner that I made in June of last year after I saw porositymaster's.
In theory I give it a grade "A+", but in actual use I give it an "F-".

 

At the same time as the burner above, I also tried a "Brute" style drip burner, and did not have any luck with that either.

I am spoiled with the siphon nozzle burner and its plug and play capability.
To start my siphon nozzle, I put a lit rag in the furnace, turn it on, tweek the combustion air slightly if necessary, and literally don't touch the burner settings again for the duration of the melt; and I have repeated that over and over again across many melts.
I know some people have trouble setting up a siphon nozzle burner, and much of that is a lack of understanding of how to light and operate it, but they do work very well. Ask scavenger about his.

 

Thank you for your reply and photos

 

Pat, it seems that you are not the only one that is having trouble trying to melt cast iron with a glumpy burner. In this video he gives up trying to melt copper/bronze and uses a propane torch. Look at the 3.oo mark.



In this video at the 4.48 he proclaims that this furnace will melt cast iron. I know it failed because he kept asking me what went wrong.

 

The external burner has been around for a long time.
The earliest example I have seen is the one that Lionel (AA guy) mentions on his website, which was featured in magazine in the 1950's, and was made from refractory.
Lio made one and reported that it did not work well.

The guy in the video above calls his external burner "very finicky", and that is being kind.

Even porositymaster has noted that his external burner is very particular, to the point that it may only work with one type of blower from one particular manufacturer, and an electronic speed control.
I don't think porositymaster has been able to scale up his burner; I believe the largest crucible he uses is a #10, but he may have upgraded by this time; not sure.
Porositymaster did finally dial his burner in, and it does work like a champ at melting cast iron, with probably the fastest melt times I have ever seen with a #10, but if nobody can repeat what he does with the burner, then it is not of much use, and I don't have any stainless metal pipe or plate.

If the external burner was a great thing, you can be sure I would be using it right now.

A siphon nozzle burner can easily be started on diesel, can be started at 100% output with no warmup, no propane preheat, and is rock stable without requiring adjustments during the melt.
Some people have endless trouble with siphon nozzle burners, but you can have endless trouble from your automobile too if you don't know how to shift out of 1st gear; hint: its not the auto's fault, its the driver.

If you don't have an air compressor, or don't want to be bothered with an air compressor, then the drip-style burner is the way to go, although you may have to use propane preheat (which is no big deal).

A siphon nozzle burner is light, compact, and does not radiate heat (notice the guy in the video has a big heat shield), and as scavenger has shown, it will easily melt a #70 full of cast iron.

Here is scavenger lighting his siphon nozzle burner. I use a couple of paper towels with a little diesel on them (no wood) to start, and I use pre-set, pre-calibrated needle valve settings, so I don't have to adjust the needle valve as scavenger does.



And here is one of scavenger's iron pours. That is a big crucible and a lot of melted iron.
Its hard to argue with the success of siphon nozzle burners.



I only know of one person in the world (porositymaster) who has gotten an external burner to melt a #10 of iron.
I know of a number of people who have melted iron with both a drip-type and siphon-nozzle burners.

 

WOW!!!

Ironside,
Is that individual related to Grant?

 

Pat, You have got me all fired up about the glumpy burner. I will have to build one and see if it can melt cast iron!

OCD I was thinking the same thing.

 

Porositymaster has proven beyond any doubt that the external burner can work better than any other known oil burner as far as cast iron melt time, and he has iron melts in the hundreds to prove it.
I have also watched him melt iron in person, and it is no fluke; he is not just talking big, he can actually demonstrate it.

That being said, I think it too him a loooooong time to figure it out, and he almost left the earth in the process of learning.
Don't underestimate how dangerous an external burner can be.
Don't be the guy who gets taken out by that 20 foot flame that these things can suddenly belch out without warning.
Saftey first, safety always.

And don't assume that because he uses a leaf blower, then you can use any old leaf blower.
He said only one type would work (with a certain impeller perhaps? check me on that.) and speed controller; why I don't know.

But the bottom line is that in the size he uses (small with a #10 crucible), it has been proven to work, and if made from stainless steel, it will last more than a handful of melts.

For an upsized version, I had no luck at all, and I have tried many types of oil burners.

But it is a hot &*#&$^# standing next to one of those on a hot (or cold) day.
Think heat shield, or perhaps full body shield.

Edit:
What would be really interesting would be to borrow porositymaster's burner, and use it on my larger furnace, with say a #30 crucible, and see if it will perform the same.
Seems like it would require more fuel and combustion air on a larger furnace.
It may be that the thing needs to be small to operate correctly with a furnace.

Edit02:
I think he starts on propane.
I started on diesel, and that was not an easy thing to do.
I think the burner shell has to be red hot before you turn on the oil.

Edit03:
It may be possible to bring a siphon nozzle into the bottom of my external burner.

The problem with siphon nozzles is if they don't discharge into an open furnace, such as if you slide the end of the nozzle back into the burner tube, you get impingement of the spray on the burner tube wall, and lots of dripping/puddling, and no matter how hot the furnace is, all that dripping fuel will not vaporize and burn (it will puddle and run out the bottom of the furnace; been there, done that).

With the external burner chamber horizontal, and the siphon nozzle in the bottom, there may be enough diameter to prevent the impingement and dripping/puddling, especially with a propane preheat.

Hardly seems worth the trouble to shave a few minutes off the melt time, but if it achieved a hotter melt, then perhaps it would be worth the trouble.

But the bottom line is IF you can get one to work (good luck, you will need it), then the partially or even fully combusted gas stream entering the furnace my be at 2,000 F or higher, instead of injecting ambient air temperature combustion air into the furnace.

 

I think porositymaster will be attending Soule this year on the 3rd and 4th (Friday, Saturday) of November (next week), and if so, I am pretty sure he will be melting iron with his external burner.

http://www.soulelivesteam.com/