After I finish putting the guitar back together I think I want to tackle making a forge and a foundry furnace. Or a forge/foundry furnace depending on what I learn here.
What I have is an old 28 gallon air compressor tank that has rusted at the drain hole so it's pretty useless as a pressure vessel at this point. It's 16" in diameter and 32" tall (26" if you don't count the domed end caps). I've been looking at this thing sitting in the corner of my garage for a couple years and figured this would be a pretty good use for it.
I want to melt metal (mostly aluminum) for casting. I also want to heat steel so I can forge things. I could cut it in half making a 16" tall foundry furnace and a 16" long forge. Or I could make the whole thing pivot from horizontal to vertical to switch back and forth depending on which process I am working on at the time. I doubt I will be doing both forging and melting things at the same time. I'm leaning heavily towards using propane as a fuel. Likely a dual burner setup.
Most of the diy stuff I've seen on youtube has been using much smaller things for making these things. From coffee cans to metal pales and I've seen a couple made out of 20# propane tanks. Is there a reason I shouldn't use this old compressor tank?
Also I need some ideas on what to do with the motor from the compressor. I'm thinking it would make a good motor to power some buffing wheels for polishing various things. Any other ideas?
