[Stoves] Bulk density of spheres

[drew]

I haven't measured Bulk Density, just hand rolled the balls out of my 
standard mix of home made refractory insulation that I use for making 
all kinds of things.   I use lincon county fire clay (as powder), and 
agricultural grade perlite (as coarse as I find at the local farm supply 
store) and mangy wood chips that have sat outside for quite a while, and 
are mixed in size with probly 1/2 bark.    I mix it all together dry 
(watch out for the dust, mask or stand upwind) then wet it, let stand 
for at least 24 hr. then hand form it to whatever you want.  The big 
trick I have found is to make sure that you let it sit for a couple of 
days, in a warm spot, then just before you use them the first time put 
them in an oven at 150 for an hour or two to get the remaining moisture 
out of them.   They seem to end up quite tough and hard, more sawdust 
the better it seems.   I had wondered if I could get enough sawdust into 
them that I coud just make one big cake that would sit on top of the 
fuel pile and have the gas drawn right through it, but decided that 
would be too problematic.    I also wondered about using a steel core 
for the balls to increase thier weight.  In the larger systems adding a 
layer of steel punchings under the spheres might be interesting?

I think all tluds could likely benifit from this simple technique, 
thought I wonder if spheres are the best shape, perhaps a closer packing 
shape would be better?  One nice thing about the spheres is that I just 
pour out the charcoal (I get charcoal depending on my air 
pressure/flow), into a bucket with a sort of collender made of 3/4 mesh 
on the top, this leaves any large charcoal chunks and the sphere's ready 
to be poured ontop of the next batch.   



All the best
Drew

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