Playing with Fire
Posted: 2008-05-02 07:47am
Lately I've been messing around in my spare time building furnaces. At first I got these little hobby booklets that go into detail on how to make them just right, with fireclay refractory and stuff. Being somewhat of a hillbilly though I realized I didn't need most of that shit, and they were too small for me. I mow lawns for my job, which basically consists of me driving around with a trailer and all my tools and trimming and raking up lawn debris. My brother gets to drive the tractor. I also pick up whatever scrap metal I find while I'm on my way to my jobs all over my local area. That means I get alot of aluminum stuff like Grills, Lawnmowers, window frames, and stuff.
Now obviously pure aluminum is worth the most as scrap, but alot of times if you break up say a mower deck, or the engine, you can't get all the steel bolts and studs and crap out of there without investing so much time that it negates the value of the scrap. Obviously the solution is to melt it.
After alot of screwing around, I came up with a furnace that works. I took a 55 Gallon drum and torched a hole in it a few inches up from the bottom, as well as cut the top out. Into the hole I inserted a 3' length of heavy pipe about 4" diameter. Into the pipe I put the air pipe of a leaf blower. I filled up the drum with busted picket fence slats and other random wood debris and poured some kerosene in there. Once I had lit it up and got the fire going good I started the blower and throttled it up to a proper setting.
The barrel started burning with extreme nasty force, shooting fire out the top and radiating intense heat all around. I took a cast iron pot, which acted as a crucible, and hung it on a chain across a pipe laid over the top of the barrel so the pot could hang right down inside the fire. The pot was filled with broken up aluminum pieces from a Toro self propelled lawn mower. After maybe 15-20 minutes of feeding the fire with wood scraps and dumping in drain oil, which is people leave at the curb when they change it from their cars, I had the pot glowing with intense bright red heat and the aluminum had melted down.
I lifted the pot from the fire and used a spoon fixed on a length of pipe to skim out the accumulated crap that was floating in the metal, like hunks of charcoal and ash and dross. This left me with a pot of clean metal. Since I didn't have any muffin pans or ingot molds handy to pour it into I just set the pot aside and let it cool off and harden. The result was a dome shaped ingot of shiny aluminum weighing almost 2 lbs.
I didn't take any pictures or video of the first melt, but I plan on doing more, and if people are interested I will be happy to document it and post the pictures here.
Now obviously pure aluminum is worth the most as scrap, but alot of times if you break up say a mower deck, or the engine, you can't get all the steel bolts and studs and crap out of there without investing so much time that it negates the value of the scrap. Obviously the solution is to melt it.
After alot of screwing around, I came up with a furnace that works. I took a 55 Gallon drum and torched a hole in it a few inches up from the bottom, as well as cut the top out. Into the hole I inserted a 3' length of heavy pipe about 4" diameter. Into the pipe I put the air pipe of a leaf blower. I filled up the drum with busted picket fence slats and other random wood debris and poured some kerosene in there. Once I had lit it up and got the fire going good I started the blower and throttled it up to a proper setting.
The barrel started burning with extreme nasty force, shooting fire out the top and radiating intense heat all around. I took a cast iron pot, which acted as a crucible, and hung it on a chain across a pipe laid over the top of the barrel so the pot could hang right down inside the fire. The pot was filled with broken up aluminum pieces from a Toro self propelled lawn mower. After maybe 15-20 minutes of feeding the fire with wood scraps and dumping in drain oil, which is people leave at the curb when they change it from their cars, I had the pot glowing with intense bright red heat and the aluminum had melted down.
I lifted the pot from the fire and used a spoon fixed on a length of pipe to skim out the accumulated crap that was floating in the metal, like hunks of charcoal and ash and dross. This left me with a pot of clean metal. Since I didn't have any muffin pans or ingot molds handy to pour it into I just set the pot aside and let it cool off and harden. The result was a dome shaped ingot of shiny aluminum weighing almost 2 lbs.
I didn't take any pictures or video of the first melt, but I plan on doing more, and if people are interested I will be happy to document it and post the pictures here.