Iron Melting Cupola Furnaces
for the Small Foundry
by
Steve Chastain
Great book. Simply a great book. A bit expensive, but does it deliver! Dave Gingery loaned me a video of Steve and friends firing the cupola one evening. It was something to see! Flames shooting skyward... Blinding streams of molten iron flowing into the ladle... Sand castings being poured... Makes me want to stop publishing books and start pouring iron!
You get complete plans and operating instructions for a 10"
diameter cupola. HOLD IT! Now before you thumb your nose at me and start telling
me that 10" ain't much of a furnace, I must remind you that a cupola is a
fast melting furnace. With nothing more than a shop vac you can melt 330 pounds
of iron in an hour's time. Put on a high pressure blower and you'll get more
than 600 pounds of iron. 
And
because you must have your sand molds already formed and in place before you
start the heat, that means you'll need about 2 tons of foundry sand to accommodate
such a large amount of metal!
Steve will show you how to scale this fine little furnace up to produce more that a ton of iron per hour. But will you have enough sand for molds? I doubt it. You would need an army of gorillas to wheel that kind of melt...
Chapters include theory and design considerations, 
building
a 10-inch cupola, cupola operation, air supply and blowers, designing centrifugal
fans, construction of centrifugal fans, construction of pitot tube and manometer,
calculation of air flow, additional cupolas based on the 15" shell, oxygen
enrichment, purchase of coke and more.
You get a small book. It's so good you'll wish it were 500 pages. But reading t'aint the same as doin'. Read the 128 pages, then get off your butt and build a furnace. The most difficult part will probably be getting the coke. And he'll advise you on that, too.
Fantastic book for the foundryman. Stewart Marshall is impressed. Last time I saw Dave Gingery, he went on and on about how great this book was gonna be. And I have to agree. Get a copy. Pure meat. No fluff. Solid, proven how-to. I only wish it were five times bigger. Get a copy! 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 softcover 128 pages
No. 1505 ... $19.95
Dave Gingery Comments on Steve's Iron!
The
real test of cast iron comes when you apply tools to convert a casting into
something useful. The eight piston rings I made with a sample of Steve's iron
pass the test with high grades. The thin scale peels off easily to expose
fine grain iron and there were no inclusions, which indicates that the melt
was hot enough to allow fluxing and skimming. This cupola works well and the
author knows how to use it.
The real test of a book is not in reporting the authors knowledge, skill and achievements, but rather in showing the reader how it's done. Here, at last, is a cupola book that shows YOU how to do it. It's all here in these pages. Everything you need to know about building an iron melting furnace and where to get what you need to do it.
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