Hello everyone, I recently made my second forge. I believe I mixed the refactory on the thin side, about the viscosity of marmalade I would say. It was applied by hand to the entire floor roughly 3/8 inch thick, and allowed to set for about half an hour. The body was then rotated, and around 1/4 inch was applied to the rest of the forge. I sealed it in a trash bag for 36 hours or so to cure, and veeery slowly brought it up to heat for the first time.
The issue is that the refactory is quite brittle, flakey, and pourous, not like KoL 30 should be I reckon. She cracked a bit on the first heat, they were small and filled with 3000* cement.
The way I see it, I did two things wrong that could be causing the lack of integrity- I did not cure it for nearly long enough, a week would be much better, and I mixed it perhaps too thin. I do understand the more water, the weaker, but I was willing to sacrifice some strength, just not this much.
I'm looking to apply a thin hard coat of something very flux resistant and strong to bolster the Kastolite. What are thoughts on this? So far I've been looking at Metrikote IR and Mizzou. The IR would be a swell bonus, but I need durability/ flux resistance first.
I'm not sure if he is a member here, but I give my thanks to Wayne Coe for his products and friendly wisdom in my building this, and to everyone here for their time and thoughts.
Just for kicks, I slapped together a "foundry" I made using 3 parts furnace cement, 1 part KoL powder from the dustpan, 2 parts white play sand, and one part cherry sawdust. The burner is a 30k Atlas. I don't expect it to last long.
I understand the bricks and stones I am using are at best big heat sinks. They were all heated slowly behind a face shield to hopefully eliminate the chance of spalling. Kiln shelves are on the list!
Thank y'all again
The issue is that the refactory is quite brittle, flakey, and pourous, not like KoL 30 should be I reckon. She cracked a bit on the first heat, they were small and filled with 3000* cement.
The way I see it, I did two things wrong that could be causing the lack of integrity- I did not cure it for nearly long enough, a week would be much better, and I mixed it perhaps too thin. I do understand the more water, the weaker, but I was willing to sacrifice some strength, just not this much.
I'm looking to apply a thin hard coat of something very flux resistant and strong to bolster the Kastolite. What are thoughts on this? So far I've been looking at Metrikote IR and Mizzou. The IR would be a swell bonus, but I need durability/ flux resistance first.
I'm not sure if he is a member here, but I give my thanks to Wayne Coe for his products and friendly wisdom in my building this, and to everyone here for their time and thoughts.
Just for kicks, I slapped together a "foundry" I made using 3 parts furnace cement, 1 part KoL powder from the dustpan, 2 parts white play sand, and one part cherry sawdust. The burner is a 30k Atlas. I don't expect it to last long.
I understand the bricks and stones I am using are at best big heat sinks. They were all heated slowly behind a face shield to hopefully eliminate the chance of spalling. Kiln shelves are on the list!
Thank y'all again
