Rutland furnace cement just plain sucks... Imperial holds up better, but William is someone who has a lot more experience and I will ask someone to make a few suggestions here please for best furnace cement (the one consensus is that Rutland Cement sucks).ASHDUMP wrote:Great information Doug - I'll take a look at this tonight when I return home. I had my entire head in the stove sideways trying to look underneath the front part which I believe had sufficient welds. The two side pieces had larger stitch welds at the ends/corners and then smaller tac welds in the middle. The back had stitch welds too. How much of the voids should be covered? cover 90% of the voids?I didn't find any holes on the top flange like you had mentioned.dcrane wrote:Yep... 2000 degree cement is fine, the the critical part of that flange assembly is that front bar the runs parallel with the bottom of the top door opening (this area will fail if that bar is not welded good), make sure it has at least one inch welds along its entire length before you start burning coal in it. (however solid you may think it feels with tack welds... the heat from coal will pop tacks like toothpicks in an area such as that.)
How does the front part (assuming the part near the door) have structural integrity other than just holding up the pot?
There are a total of 4 flange pieces: 1 on the left, 1 on the right, one in the back near exhaust and one in the front. All 4 pieces hold up the burn pot.
What kind of furnace cement do you recommend? I'm sure everyone had their favorites... I'd rather just go based off of experience and save me the hassle. Rutland seems to be the most popular but I don't mind ordering from ebay/amazon for the right stuff....
http://www.meecomfg.com/products.php#page=22
The front bar on that flange as you can see is made of solid 1" bar stock, the metal along the bottom of the top door opening would be VERY susceptible to warping without that bar (it will never fail with that bar)... the reason is because this is a point of max. heat at the same time their is no other means of support (like the rear or sides all have support top to bottom but because of that wide top load door this area has a broad stretch of no support akin to trying to span a 10 foot doorway with no header.... that barstock is like the header to that doorway). hope that makes it more understandable
If you see no secondary air holes around that flange and there is stitch welding around the entire flange than leave it alone and allow that air to come up past the areas of no welds (we will use that as our secondary air supply).