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Refractory cement
Last time we discussed how the furnace body material needs to have a low thermal conductivity, to ensure that temperature builds up inside the furnace; this has the nice additional property that the...
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What If The Crucible Fails?
So, to briefly review, the furnace that I’m going to build is essentially a bucket made of refractory concrete. The bucket will contain charcoal and a crucible: a smaller removable vessle that contains...
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Mizzou castable refractory instructions
I’ve built my furnace; mistakes were made along the way which I’ll document in a later episode. I decided on a 10 3/4 inch outer diameter with a 2 inch wall. The furnace is 15 1/4 inches high, and 2...
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Royale With Cheese, plus, dividing temperatures
In reading over the previous posts I realized that I am switching between the metric and Imperial systems of measure at will. This is what I get for being a Canadian who has lived in the United States...
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Mistakes were made, part one
I said a couple of episodes back that I made some mistakes in the design and implementation of my furnace; fortunately they were mistakes from which I learned something, and that were fixable. The...
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Mistakes were made, part two
This post is from my series on building a backyard foundry. My third mistake was building the furnace before I had obtained the crucible. Post construction I went to a number of thrift stores looking...
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Reduction and oxidization
This post is from my series on building a backyard foundry. We all have a basic understanding of “oxidization” I think: when a metal like iron is exposed to oxygen, either in the air, or dissolved in...
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Mistakes were made, part three
This post is from my series on building a backyard foundry. You remember back when I said in part two of this series that I was temporarily using a flimsy stainless steel tub as a crucible until I...
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Casting: making a green sand mold
Today another episode in my seldom-updated series about building a home aluminum foundry. The technique I use for casting aluminum is called “green sand” casting not because the sand is green (though...
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Melting aluminum
Today another in my ongoing, seldom-updated series of posts about building my own backyard foundry. Today I’ll describe how the final step works: actually melting and pouring the metal. First, see my...
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