At last the rainy season has begun; the sky is overcast, and it rained this morning. I'm wearing a long sleeved shirt.
I put a small investment in the burn out kiln on Friday that I was going to pour today, rain, heat, or whatever. It's 12 inches tall and 9 inches in diameter.
Here is the oil tank. It is down for adding oil, and then up for use.
It has about ten feet of head, which is plenty high for waste motor oil in this climate. (It's hot all year here.)
Here is the burner set-up. It's a Lionel Hot Shot, modified, in that I ran the 1/8 inch oil drip pipe down the center of the burner tube almost to the end. I have a common household light switch dimmer on the shop-vac to control it. I run it at about 3/4 speed for this small furnace.
The propane inlet is the 1/8 inch iron pipe at the bottom of the picture.The oil feed is the copper tube. That is a needle valve you see , and between that and the burner tube is a ball valve. To get good oil flow control, I found that I had to have a needle valve in the line.
And now it is poured and the suspense begins.
I also used to complain about the less than perfect surface finishes I was getting on these Everdur castings. Finally Bruce Fink told me to stop breaking them out hot. He said the hot surfaces were oxidizing.
I used to break them out of the moulds while they were still almost red hot. I read somewhere you could do that, because Everdur contains no low melting point metals (lead, zinc, tin) so it's all solid while still red hot. It was written by someone who should know have known better.
After I started waiting overnight, the surface finishes have improved dramatically.
I have learned the hard way to be wary of what guys write in books. Kind of like U-Tube, just not as bad.
R