I am glad I read this thread as I was on the fence regarding the oxygen-acetylene torch with some portable propane torches and melt dishes that I have seen Steve aka Kadriver aka streetips use or getting this ...
https://www.amazon.in/Ashirwad-Ente...&hvtargid=pla-1003724951668&psc=1&ext_vrnc=hi
Video demonstration ...
I am never going to need to melt more than 1 kg even with Silver and a big arse gas furnace is over-kill from where I am standing. Unless you are refining 6 days a week and at that point, I am going to ask you how you are getting that much scrap to process?
Although this product is advertised on Amazon.in it is not
mickey-mouse / made in China like the ones I have seen for sale in the US on Amazon/Ebay and you can buy a crucible (same dimensions) from another supplier that will withstand a 25 megatonne nuclear war-head if this stock one shows signs of giving out on you.
India has one of the biggest steel industries on the planet with our domestic crude steel production expanded from 109.85 Million Tonnes Per Annum to 168.45 Million Tonnes Per Annum.
So there is a strong history of products that are industrial standard here. Plus they are not made in China as we still manufacture (wink).
I do agree that getting a
mickey-mouse crucible made in China (supplied with your
cheap-O bench unit on Ebay) that drops a 500 gm load of gold on your steel-toe work boots is going to induce some profanity that would make your mother give you the stink-eye.
But I would just say buy a legit crucible made out of high-quality materials to fit your furnace. Problem solved.
I think I will be avoiding running any gas here ... as why bother with the hassle of an oxygen-acetylene torch and or a big gas furnace when you do not need it. Streetips built one in his yard for peanuts but he needs YouTube content to keep up his subscription numbers (and their attention) and he needs to do those 2 kg silver smelting sessions (which he drops on the dirt).
Watch him do the poor at 9 min 27 ...
Even I was holding my breath when he pulled the crucible out of the furnace with straight handled tongs ... I was thinking OMFG ... here we go!
But he did not drop it until he had the bar in situ ... extremely lucky indeed!
Having 2 kg of 961.8 °C smelted silver running around in your Italian loafers would have put a dent in your day.
But as Steve says in multiple videos "you are watching me learn here as I go!"
If you read this Steve ... you are the reason I gained the necessary motivation for getting involved in refining gold/silver. I would not be here without your efforts ... so nothing I say is intended in any form other than light heart jest.
My final point is that I would never be melting more than 200 gm of gold at a time and I doubt I will be melting any silver at all for a good while.
I will be inquarting my gold with silver but I will only recover it by cementing it out on copper and washing it.
Until the futures contracts (paper markets) stop instigating this insidious
PM suppression I will just leave my silver cemented out in industrial size plastic drums inside polyurethane.
What burglar is going to give a bunch of cement coloured powder in a blue plastic industrial drum that is stored in your ladder next to multiple other drums with WPC80/MPC/whole-egg powder/maltodextrin powder
etc in them a second look!?
And it is cheaper than buying more bloody safes that scream
OPEN ME ... I CONTAIN VALUABLE ITEMS!
I am getting off-topic here ... but I know a very wealthy guy here in Gujarat who built a villa up in a nice spot in the hills (hill station) and he had the bricks for the fireplace made to the same shape as his 1 kg bullion bars and then got to painting the bullion bars with white-wash like the bricks he had made for the fireplace ... he then built them into the brick fireplace himself when completing the villa after the other tradesmen had left the job-site.
I can think of worse places to stash your casino chips (under the bed is so obvious).
And no he did not tell me where the villa he built was
and I did not ask ...