Want to make my own casting furnace...would this work?

[theperfessor]

My 20+ year old Bunn coffee maker bit the dust not too long ago (we got a new one). I disassembled the old one and ended up looking at the water reservoir. It's a stainless steel vessel about the same diameter and twice as tall as my Lyman 20 lb bottom pour furnace. Its only 0.030" thick however. With a PID controller and suitable heating coils I think I could make a dandy 35-40 lb lead pot.

I can do all the electrical and mechanical work necessary to make this happen, but I don't want to go to a lot of work if it will be too thin. I've already done the strength calculations and it seems like it would be OK, but I'm not very experienced with electric melting pots from a practical stand point (hot spots and stuff).

Any opinions here?

[HeavyMetal]

My concerns would be the thickness ( .030) and the quality of Stainless used in a coffe maker.

If you can figure out exactly what stainless was used you can move forward.

I'd be lerry of 400 series, which is magnetic by the way, 300 might be passable depending on grade. I just don't see a manufacturer spending that kind of money on a coffee pot even the high end ones.

Having said that , and I'll ask if you figured in for heat fatigue, I will watch this thread with some interest.

[TCLouis]

WAY back when I first started casting I used my Dad's WWII stainless canteen cup and cast many many thousand 429215s out of it.

I cast 20-30 lbs of lino ingots this weekend using an old stainless steel sauce pan and theColeman stove.

Did not use the pans handle because of the weight, but the pan is as good as new.

[Catshooter]

I would go for it. Thirty thousanths I would think plenty. I bet the Lyman/RCBS/Lee pots are not much thicker than that.

Keep us posted.


Cat

[theperfessor]

Last week I used my BIL's smelting rig, which uses a propane powered "fire tube" for heat. The casting vessel is a regular stainless steel saucepan that isn't any thicker than the Bunn water reservoir, and its exposed directly to very high flame temperatures. It can melt 50 lbs in about 10 minutes or less. (Of course it could be a different grade of stainless steel.)

This isn't a front-line project for me, but I think I'll go ahead with some planning and drawing and design it in such a way that if it doesn't work I can replace the reservoir with something heavier. It will give me a chance to think things through and start gathering parts.

Has anybody dealt with any good vendors of electric heating elements that you would recommend?

[RP]

I use a SS tray that came out of a food warmer the kind they use in stores. I use it for smelting it will hold two 5 gal buckets of WWs easy. I melt using a mil. cook stove which is open flame running on gasoline. Lots of BTUs right on the tray I also stir the WWs around with a flat shovel. Been using it for a few years smelting around 5 tons of WWs reclaimed bullets and sheet lead with no problems. I made a steel replacement but it took so much longer to heat up I scraped it the thinner the pot the faster the heat transfer which iam sure you know.