Furnace castable questions

[Travis Frink]

Originally Posted by Pete VanderLaan

The purpose of craftweb ultimately is to promote designs and to answer questions intelligently as they come up. That involves seining a lot of information.

The jury will be out on the efficaciousness of the rebuild which comes up with the first fuel bill. In the earlier days, when we would rebuild a furnace and the bill would be lower, we would pat ourselves on the back about the great new design when in reality, the new one was simply tighter than the old model.

It well could be the case that the insulating value of the stuff Travis is using is not anywhere as efficient as it might claim to be. Again, the proof will be in the pudding after a month or so.

These days, if it yields up great glass, I give a quiet "Thank You" and push a rosary bead along.

Thank you for keeping this site going. It is an amazing resource of technical knowledge as well as history of the growth of the studio glass movement from a first person perspective.

The first gas bill or two will tell how effective the build was from an insulation perspective.

Laws concerning high temp fiber insulation seemed to have changed recently and some of the replacement products are giving some people problems apparently. Namely, fiberboard shrinks and gets real soft with firings. This was apparently not a problem for this person in the past. Time will tell if the materials we used do what we need them to do.