Made some progress today.
I learned something about the Satanite. It is clay commonly packed on knives to protect the spine from quenching to keep it tough. It is also used in forges to make a layer over ceramic fiber. But a 1 inch layer was too thick and was shrinking and curling up as it dried so I removed it.
It was just like dried clay and I realized it could be reconstituted (not much available for instructions). I shaved some off and made a slurry.
And painted it on thin. This has been dried about twenty minutes with a hair dryer.
It was hard. Good. I added three more layers, letting it dry good in between layers then left the hair dryer on it for a couple of hours. The temperature got up to 200F so I fired it up.
Notice there is no smoke and you can see the yellow propane valve is off. This is old very black motor oil, transmission fluid, and gear grease. Anything I have drained out of cars the last few years.
The air control on the burner makes all the difference. It's the yellow tab on the rear in a slot.
It looks like it has 1/3 of the pipe open.
The yellow guillotine hinge bolt is squeezing a grommet to provide friction. It works great and doesn't vibrate out of position.
I'm using a 1/4" ball valve to throttle the oil. Flow is very sensitive to small changes in position and I can adjust air to barely eliminate the smoke. I lowered the supply pressure to 10 psi and think I'll try 5 psi next. My quandary is I want to use the ball valve if possible. When it plugs up I can snap it open and back closed and let the plug go through. With a needle valve, it might have to be disassembled. Since I have plenty of pressure (the tank can operate up to 40 psi) I should put an oil filter on the feed line. I hesitate to do that because if I can burn sludge or water contaminated oil it makes collecting oil easier. An oil filter may plug up suddenly if it gets a lot of sludge but the furnace can burn it if I can get it into the furnace. Did that make sense?
Here's a view down toward the burner. I'm getting swirl around the crucible but also a secondary swirl in front of the burner. I kind of like that because it helps the oil get hot.
The oil fire is almost free, but it's a little hard looking through the flame to charge the crucible. I think I'll get used to it. I can always shut off the oil then turn it back on or switch back to propane. I melted two crucibles of aluminum today. The new floor coating looks good but it's too hot to really look at. It will still be over 100F in the morning but I can stand that. The insulation really holds the heat.
Thanks for stopping by. Making a little progress!
And she loves mom.. That's good Drives, I think that fits very well.
