Metal Casting Zone

has anyone fired their own clay crucible in their furnace capable of holding iron?

I'm working on it. I would reccomend the Vince Gingery book "Making Crucibles", it has some very viable methods. Just make sure you ram them quite hard, and instead of fireclay and sand use kaolin and calcined alumina. The clay mix he proposes isn't really up to iron temps. I am in the process of making a mold that will make ramming up good quality dense crucibles fairly easy. I will post results when I actually have some. I have made the mold described in his book and it works fine, I just got the wall thickness on mine a little too thin to really hold up to iron. Not that I haven't tried 'em to melt iron, the one I tried failed. It's a work in progress for several casters that I know of.

im researching as well.i would love to try a clay crucible but they cost way to much over here like $100 plus. too much if they break!

eurus wrote:
has anyone fired their own clay crucible in their furnace capable of holding iron?

I posted a recipe for refractory, that also can be used for holding molten, refractory steel alloys.

2 parts fireclay and 1 part magnesium oxide, (MgO).
If you can turn forms on a lathe and ram the low moisture mixture, it would work.

I've had the steel alloy ingots spectroed' and they didn't absorb anything from the crucible.

I would use that recipe for really high heat stuff though, as they are slightly fragile.