Found Dreaming

I fired my new 10 inch furnace for the first time today. I was expecting to see a blue flame, but had only this orange, is this alright, or do I need to do some more work, the cast tuyere did not come out perfect. I really need this furnace to heat faster then the old one

BTW this pic was at 5 PSI, but cranked up it still had the red flame

Sorry, no experience with propane burners but maybe you need to adjust the air? It looks like you can see blue in the center of the flame, is the orange from the flame or heat from the walls?

Harry wrote:Sorry, no experience with propane burners but maybe you need to adjust the air? It looks like you can see blue in the center of the flame, is the orange from the flame or heat from the walls?

That is flame, the furnace is not hot yet.

I ran it for nearly an hour, scrapping out some Aluminum, but I will not be able to tell anything til I get a heat of brass in it, but I think something is not right yet

I was thinking it was because of new refractory but you said you ran it a while. Did you try it with the lid on and is that a reille (sp) type burner? I use forced air and just adjust air and gas until it looks right.
I think it will be OK once you get a crucible of metal and a lot of heat.

well there is good news, and bad news. I poured brass from a cold start in 1 hour, unfortunately, my hotface failed
I was afraid it would happen I chose a Bargain Refractory not rated high enough. but on the bright side it will let me give it another go with some slight design improvements, maybe I can get that melt time down to 45minutes like some brag about

HT, I did not want to say anything because you had already finished and it would not help but if you do redo the furnace you might want to change the relation of the tuyere to drain channel and pouring spout. Move it 90" so that the flame goes across the drain channel at the side it drains from.

This will let you tilt the furnace so you can pool metal when scrapping aluminum and tilt it up to vertical to pour it off when you have enough to fill your ingot molds. It will also keep the drain hot so that it wont have any chance of freezing up in there. Just some thoughts if you are going to be making changes anyhow.

Congrats on getting the time down, an hour is respectable for brass and should not be far off from iron. If you have a few pours to do the subsequent pots will pull much faster.

that is reasonable, I was concerned I might loose heat out the drain hole, but I shove a wade of kaowool in it anyhow.

I kind of wish I had experimented a little more, so I knew exactly what brought down the burn time, was it the burner, the additional room around the crucible, or the extremely insulative refractory I used, and watched fail

I bought some RHI refractory in Mexico City a few months ago that was rated for somewhere around 2500F. It is deteriorating. I was too lazy to go out to the place where I buy Mizzou. So several weeks ago I went and bought 2 bags of Mizzou. That stuff holds up. I really pour the heat to it with a waste oil burner and it just asks for more.

Richard

The 3K* Mizzou is some really good stuff. I used Kast-O-Lite 2600 with 1 1/4" of Mizzou over it in my last rebuild and that furnace looks like a rock, only burned it in and ran one 4 hour scrapping session in it so time will tell but I think it will stand the test of time.

I did make a plinth of the 2600 stuff and it slumped during the burn in so by itself it wouldnt be good for anything over aluminum and even at that it would be fragile, foam and Mizzou is stronger once fired as long as the foam ratio isnt much over 2 to 1.

I second what Harry said about having the drain hole 90deg to the burner
If you get things right you can do bronze straight from the furnace.
The other thing is if you are conserned with heat loss plug the hole with a clay bod and only open it up when you need it.

This pile of ingots where made by direct melting, I started with the Alli ones then changed the bronze.


I have made my furnace with a "knock out" bottom so I can change it easy if needed