First fireup test! April 12, 09

Even though the chimney isn't to its finished height yet, I was excited to try out the furnace to see how it may do with a small fire in it. Would the flue and chimney draw smoke? Very well was my observation! I found it to do very well. It may have had trouble though if it had been a windy day with the low chimney height it has now. I will fix that soon.


It feels really good to see it in action!


I made a small fire this time so not to crack any bricks. Just wanted to drive out the left over moisture in them and the mortar joints. Did see some steam coming out of a few places. Not to much though. Some of this brickwork had been drying out for a few months now.



Once the fire was hotter it drew through the flue great! Not to much smoke in the shed.

Brickmaking and furnace update for April 11, 09

Heres the progress on the furnace chimney! It wont be long now till its first smoke!


I love the warmer weather we now are enjoying here.

Brickmaking update for April 3, 09

Flue passthru for my furnace is finished. Now all that is left is to finish the chimney and add the doors.

I am also still trying to find a quicker method to create my radial bricks for the chimney. Running some tests.

Back outside. 3-26-09

With the warmer spring weather Ive had here, I set up my brickmaking outdoors to increase output.

By stockpiling clay and sand in bigger piles, I can mix up more and larger batches for the presses.

I have made alot of progress on the chimney base since the last post. I am nearing completion of the flue and base. Im starting to form up the chimney stack now. This is were its gonna really take shape!

Brick smokestack

This is the brick smokestack at Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana. The pics are poor because of the snowy weather the day I was up there. I will try to get better pics when I can.

The raidial brickwork is larger than the standard bricks nearby.

The stack is over 100' I would guess.

Radial brick progress

The first batch of pressed earth radial chimney bricks are partially cured and hard enough to handle now. So I thought I would lay them out in a circle to get a feel for how they will look in the chimney this spring.

The steel ring in the inside diameter is about 14" dia. It takes 8 bricks to make one ring thick at that diameter. I have some room for adjusting their positions to make larger and smaller ring diameters. The base of the chimney will be this thickness and will taper as it gets taller. I am thinking of the top having an inside diameter of about 10". To do that I will have to use some half bricks with the others to get a smaller circle. If I do it right, it should be a smooth transition from big to small at the top.

My brick furnace plans and more examples

Here are my early plans for my aluminum melting furnace made out of my bricks.


It has the furnace inside the barn and the chimney outside with a brick duct passing thru the wall to the outside. The firbox is below and the heated chamber is above.

I found this outdoor brick oven furnace surfing the internet. It was made out of compressed earth bricks much like I am doing. It is alot of the inspiration for my version.

I really love the look of these old towering chimneys!

My chimney will be much shorter than these 100+ foot tall monsters. Im thinking at most about 20 feet tall.

Pressing radial bricks

Before I ever can begin on my garage, I still have to finish my brick aluminum casting furnace first. I want to build the brick chimney for the furnace like a scaled down version of the old time round ones factories had. To do that I need to make special bricks called "radials".

They are curved on at least their outer face. Usually also taper inward from the outside to the inside circumferance of the brick chimney diameter. That way the mortar joints will be more of a normal thickness when the bricks are layed out in a circle.

I dont want to have to build another press just for the radials. I came up with the idea of just adding a steel insert to divide the brick into parts to get a usable curved shape. It worked! I didn't bother curving the inside brick face, though I could have if I wanted to bother with the extra shim work.

I made up a removable curved 'frog' insert for the radials also. The frog helps with the bonding of the bricks with the mortar joints.

Here is the finshed product. Just needs to cure out and dry. Also needs stained to the desired red color I want. I dont really like the dryed clay brown color these bricks end up with.

Here is a batch of them to expiriment with the layout.