Non-Chemical Melting yellow casting shot with Lazersteve's mini-furnace

[bmgold]

Here's a few pics of testing out Lazersteve's new mini fire brick melting furnace. I used some of my yellow casting shot (imitation gold for practice casting)

The first picture shows the setup with a large propane tank instead of the disposable Mapp gas. I'm not sure propane will melt gold or silver in this furnace but it is much cheaper than the $8 or $9 Mapp tanks. To the right in the picture you can see my sand mold ready to pour a couple bars. The mold didn't turn out. It didn't fill completely. I'm still learning (At least I'm learning more things that don't work :wink: )

Next picture shows the melting dish full of the casting shot. Will the furnace melt this much?

The last picture answers this question. Yes, it will melt it in 20-25 minutes.

Thanks Lazersteve for this great little melting furnace.

 

[AurumShine]

Very good ........great idea..............

 

[nicknitro]

BMGold,

Thanks for sharing your results, sorry for the mix-up earlier.

Next we both need to get some pics of the real deal up. I have my furnace on order from Steve as well. I hope nobody underprices him, it's a great product, and the included melting dish sells it all day.

Good Luck BM,
Nick

 

[glorycloud]

It works great!!

I highly recommend it over torching it yourself.
This helped me make a real button and not a mis-torched monstrousity!!! (That is if self refined gold can ever be monstrous.) :lol:

Great job Steve!!!

 

[bmgold]

Button or blob, it all looks good when it is gold. Especially when you made it yourself.

I'm still playing around with the new furnace. I'm going to need some more melting dishes for when I'm ready to quit playing around and melt some gold. My last melting dish was just contaminated with a little unwashed, precipitated powder in an attempt to see some gold. It takes a magnifying glass to see them but I did get several tiny beads spread around the melting dish and a light, blue/green tint to the flux. There is also a red stain in one section of the dish.

This last dish has been heated and cooled a couple times now and still has no cracks. I must have dried this one better than the first two. They cracked but are still useable. They were used for many metals so they are very contaminated. The last one should clean up with some more flux and more heating.

Not to take any sales away from Lazersteve, but exactly what is the fire brick and where do you find them? I checked a couple places locally and all I found is fire bricks that are solid and heavy like rock. I don't know if these bricks would work for this mini furnace even if you could carve them, which you can't do easily. I'm guessing the soft, light-weight ones must be special bricks and not used to line coal furnaces. Probably heat treat furnace lining or kiln lining bricks.

I suggest just buying one from Lazersteve and save yourself all the cutting and carving to get it right. Also, the included melting dish does help sell it and if you are paying to ship the little furnace anyway, it would be a good chance to order a little pure tin powder or a DVD or three.

 

[bmgold]

Well, I found the bricks. They called them sawdust bricks at the hardware store but they are not sawdust. They are an insulating fire brick and they were around $7-8 each one. One brick would make one mini-furnace. The melting dish would add more to the cost so I still think it is best to order one from Lazersteve. His are already carved out and ready to use.

If you just have to do everything yourself even if it costs more to do so just to prove to yourself that you can, then check out the pictures below of my attempt to make a homemade melting dish. It is still a work in process as I post this but it looks good so far and except for the time involved to make it there is very little cost.

What I did was take a little bit of kitty litter and crush it up with a mortar and pestle and sift it to get a fine clay powder. I used new kitty litter for this test but the used stuff would be much cheaper :twisted:

Next I mixed a little water at a time with this powder until it was a workable lump of clay. I had the original idea of making a mold to form the dish in but ended up just forming it by hand. It should work if it don't crack while it drys. If it makes it through the initial air drying process, I plan to bake it in a small electric furnace until it is glowing real good and then allow it to cool down inside the furnace overnight. No temperature indicator on my little furnace so I just have to run it by feel. I'll post more once I get around to firing the dish.

 

[nicknitro]

BMGold,

Well, I finally got around to melting my first nugget in Steve's mini furnace. I had no issues what so ever with the furnace, however, due to my pis-poor handling the gold powder /possible losses in precipitation I deffinitely had losses. My nugget came from approx. 180 PC board fingers. I did not weigh the input powder, as my scale is down, and the melted gold nugget is about the size of 2 BB's melted together. Excellent color, I was very impressed when putting it next to some refinery bought gold.


Steve, My only suggestion, is the color of the melting dish. If it were white, it would be easier to see the colors infused with the Borax. I imagine my powder was fairly pure, but it would still be nice to see any impurities that may have stuck to the flux. Either way, I plan to order more dishes from you, "Convieniance", and probably a few more DVD's.


I will try to post pics later in the week. WOW, First time I bought anything online that worked exactly as seen.

Thanks Steve, Good Luck BMGold,

Nick

 

[lazersteve]

Nick,

I ordered some white dishes today.

They are good for hi-temperature metals like Pd and Pt.

They cost quite a bit more, but will last much longer and clean up very easily with soda ash.

I'll update my website price list when they come in.

Steve

 

[Gold Trail]

bmgold where did you find a torch like that to fit a gas grill bottle? i too am tired of buying those 8 dollar mapp gas bottles thanks. Ryan

 

[bmgold]

The torch is just an ordinary MAPP gas torch. I bought an adapter hose made for camp stoves and lanterns to allow me to use the larger tank of propane.

It looks like it should work for melting gold but it is not as hot as when using mapp gas.

 

[Gold Trail]

i was thinking for more in the lines of removing heatsinks from cpu's, sweating parts off boards, ect

 

[bmgold]

The Mapp gas torch running on propane from the larger tank should get plenty hot enough for melting solder and removing components or whatever you need to do. I have used this same torch setup to free rusted bolts.

I think the adapter hose was around 20 or 30 dollars at Lowes. The Mapp gas torch was more than I care to remember but it is pretty impressive for a one bottle, portable torch. This is one tool that is used a lot in my projects.

 

[Smitty]

So BMgold, how did you know that kitty litter can withstand enough heat to be used to make melting dishes? It's actually very ingenious, or i missed a thread here on the forum.

 

[bmgold]

The kitty litter I used was 100% clay so I figured it should work. I used kitty litter before to make a crucible to melt aluminum in and it seemed to work if the wall thickness was a fairly consistant thickness. If it had thick and thin spots it would crack either when it heated or when it cooled

The melting dish was a lot easier to shape than the deeper crucible. I heated my homemade melting dish slowly with a mapp gas torch and coated it with borax but haven't actually melted anything in it yet. I was going to fire it in an electric furnace but decided to just try it without firing it except by torch because I didn't want to spend the time in the furnace for one little dish. I think it will still work but if you are dealing with much valuable metals you may be better off buying a real melting dish. I am still just playing around so I am not risking much by trying homemade stuff. I can see that with some care you should be able to make a useable melting dish. It all depends on what you have more of at the time. Spare cash or spare time.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

A 2nd vent hole in yor mold might help.