firebrick recipies?

C

cwhittington

Joined
Sep 6, 2002
Messages
106
Does anyone have any good recipies for making high-temp or soft firebrick? I've been searching and have found lists of ingredients but I haven't found a complete recipie for it yet. Thanks in advance!

-Chris
 
Are you talking about the soft kind? Where do you get them? Out here the two places I found that had them are charging around 4.5 bucks ea!
 
I've got them for $4 a piece for the 3" thick variety and $3.70 for the 2.5" thick variety. Good refractory materials aren't cheap, but neither is propane, so the better the insulation you can use the more efficient your forge will be and the less gas you'll use in the long run.

:)

-Darren
 
Check out the Neo Tribal folks, they do all that sort of thing. I've heard you can mix some kind of fiber in the clay and when you fire it the fiber burns out leaving insulating air spaces. Haven't tried this myself of course, I paid the big bucks for the manufactured kind. They were worth every penny in my little opinion. :D
 
Bricks are one of mankinds oldest building materials so it shouldn't be hard to make them. The clencher is that like any ceramic product they have to be fired. So you have to weigh the labor/cost of fuel and time involved for firing into the equation. I doubt you would come out ahead and lord knows what an exploding brick would do to a kiln if it the mixture wasn't worked properly beforehand. I have a recipe for home made refractory that I am going to use in a small crucible furnace that should work for a brick recipe, since it is also used to make plinths as well. It's pretty basic, pretty much equal parts silica sand, fireclay and pottery grog (brick or pottery that has been broken up to a coarse sand consistency) mixed with just enough water to allow it to hold together when squeezed together in a handful. This mixture would then need to be rammed firmly into a form. At this point I'm not sure whether this mixture would need to be dried in an oven and then fired or whether it would need to be air dried like any other type of pottery before firing. I'll look at the directions I have for making the plinths, that should be similar to making a brick. Interesting project, I hope you get a chance to fool around with it.
 
From Theophilus
"To lay up a forge take good river clay the first layer 4".
The second layer 3" clay, mix well with horse dung. "
 
I've made suitable adobe bricks for a forge with 2 parts cat litter, 2 parts fine sand, and 1 part screened wood ashes. These got hot enough to glaze over, and they are nice and light when fully cured. I'm not a NT kind of fella, but the adobe bricks were tried on a whim, and I must say they are quite durable. I used to make them for the bottom of my forge, but now I just use the verticle, and the bottom is open anyway.
 
Thanks for all the replys and info- No doubt the manufactured bricks are the best, but since I'm on a tight budget and inclined toward neo-tribal anyway, I'm going to give it a try. I've read that for soft firebrick, sawdust is mixed in with everything else and leaves a void when burned out making it more of an insulator. I'll probably be ordering from Darren eventually though
I would guess.
 
I'll bet they could be fired in a regular wood bonfire, especially if the fire were laid on an iron grate over a trench dug in the ground that would either cause an updraft through the center of the fire or would catch a prevailing breeze.
 
Guy Thomas said:
I'll bet they could be fired in a regular wood bonfire, especially if the fire were laid on an iron grate over a trench dug in the ground that would either cause an updraft through the center of the fire or would catch a prevailing breeze.
Click to expand...

I've used a leaf blower on a brush fire before in mid-February. That dang fire took all the diesel fuel I had to get it going, and was still just barely going. Then I got this huge lightbulb over my head. I ducked into the garage and hauled out my gas-powered leaf blower. Well in no time flat that brush fire was blazing away in all its glory. Even now I sometimes use it on a wimpy wet damp fire in th epit when I am bbq-ing.
 
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