I won on the clay, locale shop turned me on to Clay be gone, long process. now i am down to the mercury in the concentrates. built a retort yesterday. but when i went to build a kiln my wife flipped out about the price of that high temp concrete at a 142$ for 50pound any ideas people?? hopefully if i don't blow my self up i should have so pics next week for you all. then my next ? is how to you get all the other metals out of the button. with out chemicals ? or can I
Refractory cement is mad expensive, I built a furnace a few years ago. 4" thick walls , big enough to hold a 40lb crucible (40lbs of aluminum, 1/4 ton+ of gold). Turns out you really only need a hot face on the bricks.
If I had to do it again, I could have saved $500 easy by just doing a hot face an inch or so thick.
Refractory cement is NOT easy to work with. At least the stuff I used. You need a "high shear" mixer (I welded up a fancy paint stirrer), water needs to be measured out VERY carefully, its
incredibly sticky (I used parchment and Vaseline on my molds) and it takes forever to set up... Testing my molds with concrete, I could slam brick after brick after brick... Refractory stuff, you
need to pound the crap out of it (its real stiff) and then it was a good 4-6 hours before you could even think about taking the mold off. At best I could make 3 a day, with concrete I could make
3 in 5 minutes.
Also, there are a million home brews for refractory cement, I honestly don't know how well they work.. In other words, how long they last.
Kilns are a dime a dozen, or so it seems, I have one out here, electric with no controller, I think its 18"x18"x12", I paid $50 for it. Its still out front and nobody has stolen it yet.
Some pics, just for fun.
This is the brand of refractory I used. I'm not sure exactly which product though, it was a few years ago and I've tried to repress the whole thing.
PryorGiggey | The Refractory Specialists
