Making a keg foundry furnace.

good day everyone so my propane tank furnace that i made has served me well and still is serving me well but there's some projects that i need to do that take a little bit more material so i need to make a bigger better [Music] so let's make a bigger better furnace now one common thing that people make the bigger furnaces out of is a cake i had a friend give me a keg so let's make a furnace out of a cake now i'm not a drinker and this is the first time i've ever put my hands on a cake i thought i might depressurize it this is the wrong way still a little bit of pressure in there if at first you don't succeed point the nozzle away from you and try again don't do that just drilling some holes in it seemed to be a lot easier and a lot less messy to relieve the pressure now since i'm using a one inch burner the vent hole on top should be three or four inches big this partial roll of duct tape is just about right i'll simply use it as a template and cut out the middle [Music] next i need to cut the top off to make the lid i measured about three inches down from the first weld seam seven inches down from the top [Music] i connected my lines with some duct tape to hopefully give me a good straight edge to cut on an important note at this point i should have cut out a center section of the keg it would have saved me a lot of a headache in the later stages you'll see the chamber ended up being far too big and i had to shorten it anyway now would have been a better time to do that as for the bottom here i didn't want it to be rounded i wanted to flatten that out so i put a bolt and washer in there to help lock in place some refractory cement [Music] now is a good time to put some handles on in retrospect i wish i'd used some beefier handles but these are working okay i cut the excess bolt off so it didn't interfere with the ceramic insulation i drilled a series of holes through the lid so i could later put bolts and washers to secure the ceramic insulation to the top of the lid i burned up several drill bits in the process stainless steel's tough stuff ceramic insulation is pretty nasty in the lungs so always wear a respirator when you're using it [Music] i'm using two inch ceramic insulation here [Music] i'll have to fill in this gap later on [Music] [Music] these bolts and washers will keep the insulation in place [Music] so i cut it off flush with the kick but that's not gonna work because i need to put a mortar over this to seal the kale so i need to re-cut it and inside it probably about a quarter inch and then put the mortar on top of that so i need to put about an inch and a half size hole in there to fit my burner hole cutting bit would make it easy i don't have that so i'm going to use a dremel [Music] this is definitely not the right tool for the job so i used my angle grinder to get the bulk of it out of there and then i went back to the dremel to clean up the edge [Music] so does it work technically yes it's the best tool no also the hole needs to be made into a bit more of an oval shape so the burner is directed more to the side so two inches of ceramic insulation is more than enough to insulate it but the chamber space is a little bigger than i'd like kind of need to build the furnace to the crucible you're going to be using more air space the harder it is to heat that up with a smaller burner now what i originally was going to do i was going to take a 10 inch cement footing stick that in the center that gives me about an inch of space to fill up with refractory cement that make the inside really clean looking hard durable and last a long time and it's a great way to do it from what i've been told but i've been convinced to not go that route because the more refractory cement i have in there the more of a heat sink it is the longer it's going to take to heat up the more propane i'm going to use so instead i went back to my local fire brick store and i had them cut off just a half inch blanket the half inch blanket closes it off to the perfect size for my crucible and i'm not going to get as much of a heat sink with refractory so i'm going to give this route a try and in the future if i want a bigger crucible i can take out this half inch blanket and i have a bigger chamber now i have to coat the ceramic insulation otherwise when the furnace is running all that toxic dust is going to constantly be blowing up there so for that i got some circet refractory mortar this is rated for over 3000 degrees it's really strong goes on about an eighth of an inch thick just a light coating is all it takes [Music] so we've got a problem we've got some massive cracking going on i put this on thicker than it should be and because it's an air dry it's pulling apart as it shrinks so i'm not sure what the best solution is two options i could just fill in the cracks option two i take out the mortar and put in refractory cement that's gonna cure and be a lot harder and stronger than this air dried stuff it's pretty strong but i just feel like that's going to crumble over time so instead of patching the cracks i think i'm going to just take all this out and put refractory in place since the lid comes on and off i want the rim to be durable and strong so it's not going to just crumble as i move it around [Music] since i have some leftover refractory i'll fill some containers and use them as a plinth later on [Music] a little more adjustment to get the burner angle just right [Music] that should create a nice swirling vortex of hot air [Music] oh man that welding got away from me it's ugly but i think it'll hold [Music] i want to put a really thin coating of this mortar over the insulation that's all i need so this dried and there's quite a bit of cracking so i'm not sure i'm such a big fan of the stair set it's still protecting the ceramic insulation so i'm just going to fill in the cracks and we're just going to go with it i feel like the lid was a little too concave giving it a bigger chamber than i wanted so i decided to stuff some ceramic insulation behind the existing just to bulk it out and close that space up a little more and once again i'm using refractory cement to make a good durable brim so the cement will be nice and sturdy for the rim but i still need to coat the ceramic insulation i ran out of the stair set but i didn't really like this stuff anyway so now i'm going to try green patch 421 we'll see if i like this better the green patch 421 seems to have little fibers in there and that should make it stronger and crack less when it dries so the green patch 421 still cracked but i don't think quite as badly as the cerset did just one more thing so i've got two sections of pipe and one fits right inside the other i'm hoping i can use this to make a swivel for the lid [Music] i'm welding the steel pole on there to hold up my swivel mechanism the idea behind this is when i swivel the lid out of the way it will also lift up and off the rim [Music] it's tacked up let's see if it works so it seals nice and tight but it lifts up and doesn't grind across the rim as i open it nice i'll take some of the refractory that i put in the container and i'll use that as my plinth let's go test it so i've done a couple of cycles where i'll heat it up and then let it cool heat it up and let it cool and hopefully all the water is out of there so when i fire it up to full blast it won't crack so let's see how long it takes for it to melt a copper bar [Music] [Music] [Music] so unfortunately the chamber is too big for the burner i have i wasn't able to reach melting point of copper so i had to do some drastic modifications i ended up cutting out a three and a half inch section just to make the chamber shorter i should have done this from the very start it made things so much easier so once i cut out the middle section then i just put the top section back on and welded it back together i just didn't want to have to re-pour my refractory cement rim and everything and this actually was easier i had to redo the inside but it's looking good let's give it another try [Music] do so there we have it a successful keg furnace build it can melt copper got temperatures about 2300 degrees that's enough for a bronze pour now i do think it would be better if i had the chamber even smaller or a bigger burner to be honest i prefer my propane furnace better uses less fuel gets the temperature faster but for the bigger melts this is going to work great if you have any suggestions leave it in the comments that's how i built this furnace hope you enjoyed that thank you see you next time bye you

Channel: Lundgren Bronze Studios

Views: 61,899

Keywords: Foundry, Furnace, Backyard foundry, Keg furnace, Keg foundry, Metal melting, Bronze, Aluminum melt, Ingots, Casting, Backyard casting, King of random, Metal work, Metal smith, Copper melt, DIY foundry, DIY furnace, Foundry, Furnace, Backyard foundry, Keg furnace, Keg foundry, Metal melting, Bronze, Aluminum melt, Ingots, Casting, Backyard casting, King of random, Metal work, Metal smith, Copper melt, DIY foundry, DIY furnace

Id: JyLMTD5ReaM

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021