This is the first shot at getting a burner to use in the furnace. I got it at Harbor Freight, cost about 30 dollars and has a hi-pressure valve built in so I don't need a regulator??? yet??? Most folks will call this a weed burner.
I cut a piece of 1/2 inch angle iron down until it spanned across the firebrick opening, then I removed the lower firebrick and placed the propane burner in its place. Now this has a couple issues you want to avoid. First the propane blast is going straight into the furnace, it hits the back and rolls right up to the exhaust port on top...not real efficient. It should enter the chamber at an angle which will then cause the blast to circulate around the interior of the chamber before exhausting. The chamber here is square and most of the furnaces you will see are cicular. The circular shape of the interior also helps in the swirling of the heat within the chamber. This means the heat is in contact with your crucible and material longer, heating faster and more efficiently. Oh well I am learning. On top of the propane burner you will see my waste oil burner setup, it is modeled after the famous MOYA oil burner I learned about at the BYMC site. This is its first iteration, I made some changes later.
Here is a view from the inside of the furnace chamber looking out. It shows the placement of the weed burners tips and the oil burner. Since I figured the oil burner might dribble a little I placed a 4x4 porcelain bathroom tile underneath the front tip as a drip catcher. (and those are my first two homemade crucibles...but they come in a bit...)
To seal off the front I then placed the two additional firebricks upright and thankfully the math worked out and they reached to the top of the chamber. My thought in making such a huge combustion chamber was that I wanted to heat more than one crucible at a time, maybe one aluminum and one copper or brass. Oh well I could dream alittle!!
