Thread: The Charcoal Foundry

G'day All,
Propane in this present day costs a heap.....it's up to you guys but a google on Babington Burners could give you a new perspective on waste oil burners.
Sump oil......fine orifice........air pressure.....melt metal.

Originally Posted by Schtoo

So, you got that sorted at least.



I think I will end up making a waste oil burner soon since the kero jobbie I have isn't as 'easy' as I would like it to be. The kerosene burner is good, but it's just a bit of a pain. With any luck, I should be able to get a waste oil thingy to work without needing a degree in thermodynamics to drive the thing
Propane/LPG is by far the most user friendly, but you pay for that with your wallet.
Interested?
(Oh yeah, just quietly I am re-making my lathe. Just a tad bigger than Mr. Gingery's one, like about 50% and heavily modified. Finished about half the patterns, and some more siple ones to go, but some will hold of until I cast what I got. Thankfully, ally isn't a problem anymore. )

I'm interested in your experiments with the used oil burner(have 4#44's full of it,it would be good to use them up)Which lpg burner plans have you got?I have Mike Porters book-on self aspirated lpg burners for forges and furnaces,regards,
Here is a link to the book >http://www.amazon.com/Gas-Burners-Fo.../dp/1879535203

G;day Forge,
Same book...built #1 and #2.........but I can't afford to run them.
Haven't built a Babington Burner yet...but it seems like the way to go.
Still using charcoal and on non-pension weeks.......BBQ heat beads

Originally Posted by watson

G;day Forge,
Same book...built #1 and #2.........but I can't afford to run them.
Haven't built a Babington Burner yet...but it seems like the way to go.
Still using charcoal and on non-pension weeks.......BBQ heat beads

Speaking of charcoal,seen the Indian country people making char out of farm veg waste, recently seen a lifestyle/cooking show (food )on tv Chinese country kitchen using what looked like charcoal discs .They were round(80-100mm) and had evenly spaced holes( 4-6) Perhaps they been pressed ,probably manufactured from some farm waste.Has anyone know of these?
Here is a link to the indian char>http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/44/42/
````````````and some chinese charcoal briquette>http://www.agitc.cn/Charcoal-Powder-...ing-Plant2.htm

Thanks for the links Forge.....
Makes it easier.....especially during fire restriction season

I saw a design for a waste oil burner that uses a copper or brass sphere (size of a golf ball I think- it was an off the shelf item but I can't remember what it was used for). The oil drips down onto it from above. It has a hole going through the middle through which you blast air. The oil runs down over the sphere and what isn't vaporised by the air stream drips into a container to be re-used.

Not sure what the idea of the sphere was, something to do with thinning the stream out I suppose.

Propane is definately out for me. Too expensive around here. A 45kg bottle is $90 delivered here.

I like the charcoal idea because it will cost me nothing but time. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of that, either. But I have some spare time and no spare money. There's no way I would get support from the ministry of finance if these projects cost anything to run. The conversation would be like this:

Me: I want some money to buy a bottle of gas to run my burner.
She: That's nice. What's it for?
Me: So I can melt metal to make stuff.
She: Is it stuff we can eat? Can the kids wear it to school? Will the RTA take it in lieu of payment for rego?
Me: Umm, nope.
She: Ta ta...

Here is the burner design I was thinking of. Looks like it's a Babington Burner after all...

http://www.green-trust.org/2000/biof...on/default.htm

Now this idea I like. There's plenty of restaurants around here

What really pings me off is that about 4 years ago we chucked out a perfectly good fuel oil burner that used to heat the hot water at the old place. We ummed and ahhed about it for awhile but we were in clean-up mode, so out it went. I imagine it would have been perfect for this application...

G'day again Silent,
Yep, that's a definite Babington...some models I've seen have used very unusual spheres, such as ping-pong balls/golf balls and brass door knobs.
I didn't beleive them at first..but there's apparently no heat in that area.

Here's some more info......you've already got the fourth link I had

http://www.aipengineering.com/babing...ner_HOWTO.html
http://www.babingtontechnology.com/h...urner_work.htm
http://dragoneagle.50megs.com/metalw...babington.html

Originally Posted by silentC

..............Propane is definately out for me. Too expensive around here. A 45kg bottle is $90 delivered here...............

Over $100 per 45kg bottle pick up here. (The tyranny of distance)

Mick

Wont be long before we get there too mate. It was $88 last year, $80 the year before that. Plus they charge a rental on the cylinders but that doesn't increase with usage. Of course it goes up every year too.

We only had a gas heater last year, so it was an expensive winter. In the throes of installing a wood fire now...

I just had one delivered today, cost $85.50. Bugga's are starting to get higher in price. I only use it for my cooking and go thru 1 a year

I have used 3 types of fuel. Heat beads, coke & charcoal from the remains of where farmers had burnt of piles of trees. The charcoal burnt hot enough to do small forgings but didn't last long & spat out heaps of sparks. The heat beads were used for forging a 300 mm ring out of 25mm x 150mm stock approx. This also worked well but I wouldn't have liked to try welding with it. I now use nut coke I purchased from the coke works in Bowen a few years ago & this is good to use.

Ray

Originally Posted by watson

G'day All,
Propane in this present day costs a heap.....it's up to you guys but a google on Babington Burners could give you a new perspective on waste oil burners.
Sump oil......fine orifice........air pressure.....melt metal.

Waste oil burners:here are some links:
url.http://www.abymc.com/
< >http://stephenchastain.com/books5.htm
regards

Hey Silent - I just saw this thread so thought I'd put in a belated two bob's worth.
Charcoal is nothing more than more-or-less pure carbon that just didn't burn to CO2 for reasons I can't explain from 1st year chemistry. Anyway, you can often pick up bags of it after a bushfire (the old man used to send us kids out with a chaff bag after fires, to feed the farm forge). I can gaurantee you are able to melt steel with decent hardwood charcoal - we done it lotsa times - teenage boys, scrap metals, forge - fun! (But what the point of it all was escapes me now!! )

But best of all was good black coal, picked up from the railway line, back when the local puffer ran on the stuff - once you got that stuff going, you were really cooking!

Cheers
(from a very crude old bush blacksmith...)