Hey guys my name is Jason with Mount Baker Mining and Metals and today I came
over and I was getting ready to do a smelt, have some sulfides and stuff, but I
realized that my furnace is just about shot. I've kind of patched and repaired
and wrapped as much kaolwool around as I can to keep it going. So today's video I
wanted to show you guys how I'm gonna build a new furnace and the steps the
materials I need. So first thing is I got to decide what size crucible I
want to use in the furnace so I got to figure out how big to make it. And these
are a number 10 graphite crucible and this is a number 12 fire clay crucible.
I'm gonna make it big enough to hold one of these so I can do some bigger smelts
and stuff like that. So I have this kaolwool wrap I buy this off Amazon it comes
in 24, 25 foot rolls and it's 24 inches wide and I think it's only about 80 or
$90 for a whole roll. So I'll get this laid out and figure out how much I
need and I'll show you guys how I'm gonna form it into my new furnace. So for
those of us who aren't very math savvy, I just took my wrap and formed it tight
enough to fit the crucible with a little bit of room in the edges. And it it's a
little less than half what I need but I'm just gonna take it and cut it right
in half right about there. This is one-inch kaolwool, you can buy it two inches
thick which is what I usually prefer to use just for more insulation, but all I
have right now is one inch so I'm just gonna double wrap it so you can see here
and I'll use some some water glass to glue this portion together so it stays
and kind of bonds together and then you get the two inch thick insulation. But so
yeah so now I've got my size I need so I'm gonna cut the roll in half and then
we'll see where we go from there. So I've taken my roll and like I said I just cut
it in half. And I just used a trim knife just a trim life like this and I just
cut it right in half it cuts like butter it doesn't even need to be that that
sharp and I I cut it on a steel table so my blade
didn't say sharp very long. But now I've got my half and now I'll wrap it up into
a cylinder and see how it fits around my crucible. So here's the half I cut I got
my crucible in there I've got gobs of height, I've got plenty
of height here so I can actually use a little bit bigger crucible if I could
fit it in there. And now I've got a double wrapped I said I was gonna use
some water glass which you absolutely can and I've done in the past but for
this one I'm in a little bit of a hurry I'm just gonna wrap around some tie wire
some I'm just gonna band it together. And in the past of my smaller furnaces I
lift this part up and grab the crucible right off the hearth here and for this
one I'm actually gonna leave the wraparound and I'm gonna reach in and
grab the crucible out with tongs. And I found especially in these bigger
furnaces that I've built the less handling you have on the kaowool the
longer it lasts, and so for this one again it's gonna be a little bit
delicate I'm just gonna reach and grab the crucible pull it out and then use
tongs to to pour. So I got a cut a little square here of kaowool for the top, I
usually leave the top one inch thick, cut a little vent hole and another little
hole probably right down in here for my propane torch to go in and then we'll be
ready to smelt. Okay and here's the finished furnace. I got my little lid
here cut a little hole in the top for a vent
got a little mouse hole cut in there for my torch and wrap some wire around it to
hold it all together. So I'll get the propane and the
vacuum hooked up, the blower, and we'll get her fired up and see how she goes. I
just wanted to show you guys another example of a furnace I built quite a bit
bigger. This is this is again just a wrap of kaolwool there's nothing magic about
it. A lid out of one-inch cable with a hole cut on top and then down in the
bottom there's a crucible. This is one I use for a little foundry projects and
stuff. This is a number 80 crucible it's about twelve or fourteen inches wide and
probably about eighteen or twenty inches high. So the
overall dimensions this furnace is two foot by two foot it's a whole wrap of, or
it's a whole thickness of kaolwool there for height. And it's just
sitting there, it's sitting on fire bricks for a hearth, I have the two
propane injectors, one there, one on the other side. And so there's, I mean, you can
you can make a very cheap furnace a very large size that you can smelt gold
concentrates, metal, aluminum, brass, copper... So again I just wanted to give you guys
kind of a scale and this is right here where they overlap I just glued it
together with some of that water glass I was talking about earlier. I just wanted
to give you guys an idea of scale you can really build these things up and
do a lot of work for for very very cheaply, very efficiently. So anyway,
that's a bigger furnace that I've used in the past. And in this one I
have easily 50 heats on it if not closer to 75 up to maybe 100, so
they last a long time as long as you don't jostle the kaolwool too much. It
just sits there and and does its job. Okay I wanted to walk you through it now
that it's all set up, there's our furnace, the crucible's in there, there's the cap.
We got our wires wrapped, our propane injector here which this goes off to
the propane bottle over there that you see. This is a blower and chasing the
hose down here I've got a little valve here that I can adjust the air for the
amount of oxygen we need. And then this literally goes down to a $60 shop vac I
bought at Home Depot and I just have it turned around to where it blows instead
of sucks, and that's what I use for my air. So yeah we'll get this thing fired
up, but there's a furnace build that cost less than $200. You have you can smelt
a number twelve crucible in it. It literally took me probably 20 minutes
it's it's been longer to film it then it's been to build it so that gives you
guys an idea hope you guys can use the the techniques I showed you here
and some of the ideas and build your own furnace and smelt some your old own gold
cons. Alright there we go, we've got our little blue flame down the bottom I'm
just gonna let this warm up very slowly, dry that crucible out, and then we'll get
on to smelt. So I hope you guys enjoyed the video thanks for watching
and we'll see on the next one