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975 pound day tank rebuild web chronicles
Day 1 - Thursday
The main furnace has been taken down and we have a clean futon to work on. Harry Seaman, the Studio Head Technician, has done a terrific job in getting everything ready for us! Our first minor glitch was a canceled Northwest flight from Detroit to Elmira, which put both Slate and Chad into Corning around noon. That gave me enough time to get everything set up and to put some masking on the floor around the furnace which really helps to reduce cleanup at the end. The first major glitch was that our refractory supplier took the liberty of sending us 3" super duty fire brick instead of 2-1/2". We'll be cutting one row of 3" brick down to 2", which will take one person the better part of the day. We have Shawn Murray, the assistant tech helping with brick cutting. I was able to go through the materials check list and fortunately we have everything else on the list. It's hard to over-emphasize the importance of checking and then double checking the parts lists - Never trust refractories salesmen to make substitutions! The Futon looks level and clean, no signs of rust!
Note about the brick saw - If you get a 14" saw from the rental place, make sure you check the blade for being somewhat square to the table. I can see guys unloading these saws by pitching them out the back of their trucks. I might be being picky, but I think getting the blade square is going to make things go much easier when we get to some of the tricky cuts. Another thing about the saw setup - it really helps to have the saw somewhere where everything around it can get hosed down or at least soaking wet.
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1st row of bricks are IFB's centered on the futon. These are 3" 2,300 IFB's that go in dry. |
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The 2nd row of bricks are supposed to be 2-1/2" KX-99's or some other kind of superduty fire brick. They are mortared to themselves but not to each other. I've layed them out so that none of the joints in these first 3 rows overlap. |
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The third row is 2-1/2" KX-99's that get mortared to each other as well as to the row beneath. I mortar them to the row beneath because....well it just because that's what I've always done, which is a lousy answer, and when I really think about it it doesn't seem that this row needs to get mortared to the layer beneath. ok - whatever, I'll probably keep doing it this way, but feel free to skip mortaring the two rows together - let me know how it goes. |
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Since we have so much time on our hands while waiting for KX-99's to get cut in 1/2 the hard way, we've decided to layout the arch, get the false work stared, and layout all the skew bricks. This photo shows a row of #1 arch bricks layed out on a piece of cardboard that we will scribe and use as a template for making the main ribs of the arch false work. It also shows how the skew brick cut gets layed out accurately without have to remember trigonometry. |
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So it was a 7hr day and we got a reasonable amount done, mostly we feel ready for what's next....the tank!
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