Chaudywogbaaga

Last week I got to fire up the furnace that I made. I just melted some aluminum scrap into ingots but it was still fun. Most people start with melting aluminum, believe it or not, this was the first time I had ever tried it. It was very easy compared to melting copper. I’ve been working on three new cups that I want to cast. I’m thinking of making two of them aluminum and then enameling them (which I don’t know how to do yet) and the other out of copper and then enameling it also.

Actually I started much earlier in the day with a wood fire in the furnace and just kept feeding it all day to warm it up slowly and drive off any moisture. Then later on, I dumped the ashes out and started the furnace up on propane. It was when I started up the propane I realized that the garbage can I used was made of galvanized steel. Galvanized is a big no no for these temps and for welding since it gives off zinc gas that can give you metal fume fever. I’ll be wearing a respirator while using this one (which I should wear anyway).

Follow up:

This is a better look at the furnace with a flash. I welded a chain to the lid to make it easy to lift it. The chain doesn’t transmit heat very much, so it stays cool. I’ve seen really complicated lid lifters and opted for something simple.

Looking down into the belly of the beast.

All done melting. The lid off and the crucible out and cooling. There was a lot of slag from all the paint and junk that was on the aluminum, but I filled up the crucible twice and got four really large ingots out of it. In fact, when I do this again, I think I’ll make the ingots smaller so they’re easier to feed into the crucible again.

I’m really happy with the refractory. While working with it, it seemed like it didn’t have enough bond strength but it’s much harder than the stuff in my big furnace.