Homemade Cupola.
These pictures are from making a cupola from a 50liter barrel.
It should be noted that I haven't yet tried it for its intended purpose: melting iron.
So I will be happy to hear feedback on whether you think this will work or not.
One thing I think I can see already is that it's like most girls:
The legs should have been longer.
Click image to see larger version (appx. 40K).
This link transport you back to my homepage.
Before lining was rammed.
The cylinder on the rightmost picture is the inner former.
It is made like a barrel to make it easy to remove after
ramming (hard). When I made my gas furnace, I used a 5liter
pressure weed sprayer can, and hardly got it out again.
And when I did it was with a loud "sccchhkaa-ploppp!".
So I decided to make life easier for me this time, as
the diameter of the former is 27cm, and 58cm high.
And yes, it did come out as easy as I thought, taking the
sticks out one by one.
After lining was rammed.
As you can see I welded on an axle and used 2 old flat-belt
wheels as I imagine it can be somewhat hot around them if I
drop the bottom backwards. It is hinged both ends, so it
can be dropped backwards, forwards or alltogether.
The handle caused some real headscratching, as I had decided it
must be possible to put it on without touching, or even coming
close to the cupola. The solution was to place a 10cm iron bar
from the back leg to the front leg, and bend it straight up
just in front of the front leg. The handles are tubes, so can
be put down onto these bar ends. Then there are pins on the "knee"
of each handle. This goes into the square tubes that run under the
barrel.
So what I do is to stick the handles onto the bar ends, then lift
them carefully up so the pins engage into the tubes, and off we go.
I'm not sure if I will keep the blower that is attached on the pictures.
If you look at the wall inside the garage, there hangs an old vacuum
cleaner of the type where the motor/fan unit is at the middle of
the shaft. I threw away both ends, which left only the nice little
sucker (/blower) of 260W. This kind of motor can easily be controlled
by a simple one-chip 220V speed controller. And it's more than powerful enough.
Burning the lining dry.
I made up a nice cosy wooden fire inside the lining. Took it real nice
and easy in the beginning until it stopped steaming. This it did to
the whistling sounds of escaping steam.
Then I fired up as hard as I could, which brought the walls to a
light red color in the lower half.
So now it's dry. I dumped the charge and rolled it into the garage
where it now awaits the weekend for a real scorching coal fire.
The plastic fireclay should be fired to 1200C before it gains
full strength according to the "user manual". This it did with
the gas furnace, so hopefully it will now too.
Last change: Sept. 30 1998
hits to this location since 19980930.
