Made a start on my first furnace on the weekend. I'm going with the design from the book "The Artful Bodgers Iron Casting Waste Oil Furnace".
Why that particular one? I managed to get hold of the book, it makes sense, and seems relatively simple while still being practical and sufficient to melt cast iron should I want/need to do that in the future.
For a start it will just be aluminium and probably some brass/bronze.
For those not familiar with the design, its a castable refractory inner cylinder surrounded by insulation (I'll be using ceramic blanket), foot lifted lid and the ability to melt directly in the furnace for breaking down large bits of scrap. Powered by an simple preheater type of oil burner.
Inner diameter is 250mm and the outside roughly around 400.
I was going to start with an old beer keg as the author had done, but stainless is a hassle to work with, and I remembered I had an old gas hot water service in the scrap pile. It was working OK but got swapped out for a larger unit at our old place as the ladies of the house demanded more hot water!!
So, out with the Aldi plasma cutter and made a start....
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Steve