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My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 9:02 am
by geoff_p
When I joined this forum, Harry asked to see pictures of my Thai-style cooker. So here goes:
Luckily, I don't have a car, there's no room for it.
- My foundry/workshop/storage area
- The cooker was intended for use with a wok
The steel 'rim' lets me raise the fire up around the pot
- Ex hairdrier-motor, good on 6Volts, brilliant on 12
In the background are some wheels ready to be sawn into usable pieces
- A bag of charcoal is enough for several melts, and costs about a dollar
- Smashing the 'natural' charcoal to usable small pieces is much cheaper than buying fancy briquettes
I'll try to put some more pictures in another post.
Geoff
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 9:39 am
by geoff_p
As promised, a few more pictures
- At 6V on the fan it is hot enough. I go to 12V just prior to pouring
A melt of about 1/2 kg (1 pound) takes 15~20 minutes, and uses about a quarter of a bag of charcoal (25 cents-worth.)
- It does get quite hot
- My moulding box is only 6-inches square, for which a 1/2 bowl of sand is more than adequate.
And what it is all about
- An experimental cast-aluminium crankshaft
And the engine so far. It is all aluminium except for ball-race journals and M3 cap-head screws. The prototype (single-cylinder) engine ran well enough to convince me to try this one.
More to come when I've finished a heap of woodwork. Among other things, I'm making a bed on which to rest my weary bones.
Geoff
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 9:46 am
by Jammer
That looks like a good set up Geoff. It could easily get to Bronze temp. Natural charcoal is the way to go, to much crap in the briquettes. Around here it's considered Gourmet so it costs more that the bricks.
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:34 am
by Rocco
Thanks for sharing Geoff.
I love seeing low tech set ups like yours, sometimes we tend to over complicate things, your set up is a great reminder that things don't need to be complicated to get great results, well done!
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:45 am
by Harry
Geoff
I would imagine that using charcoal since it is clean compared to say oil you could toss the wok on and do up some stir fry with the latent heat after a melt.
I like the little engine, they are always fun. Like Rocco mentioned about your setup the engine shows how simple it can be done compared to the complexity of what most of us see in modern engines.
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:54 am
by DavidF
Very nice, my furst furnace was nothing more than a pipe that i would burn wood in until i had a nice pile of coals then i would hit it with the blow dryer.
Nice engine too. For a paddle wheeler?
My first furnace, sitting ready to run at all times.
Re: My primitive charcoal furnace
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 1:08 pm
by Jammer
David, that looks kind of like xlchainsaw's furnace. I wonder how he's doing? If we got him on here that would be great, we can always use another from down-under.
My first one was a refractory burner tude that I fired charcoal briquettes in, it worked fine but took a long time to heat up and then it started getting cracks in it.
This is when I melted lite salt to make some flux chunks.
I melted Aluminum and brass in it and had it hooked to my little woodgas generator.
