Microsmelting

I’m supposed to be working on documents today but I must admit that I’ve got other things on my mind. One of these is how to turn my microwave oven into a personal foundary. I have a hankering for another japanese ceremonial blade (a nice new katana). but I haven’t figured out how to smelt in my house yet. However home based metallurgy is being brought a giant step closer using the Reid Technique (RT)

“a simplified ceramic-shell procedure for the casting of non-ferrous metals, patented in 1990. RT was first developed to avoid the problem of heat loss, which makes the the pouring of small melts very difficult – these difficulties arise however the metal is heated, and while the microwave technique set out here can be used for heating small amounts of metal in open crucibles, its greatest potential lies in its use as a flameless furnace in processes such as the Reid Technique. The crucial discovery, made during extended tests with various susceptors – materials which heat up when exposed to microwaves – was that two substances, graphite and magnetite, working together were required to achieve the kind of heating we were looking for.”

So there you go, clever use of microwave heat susceptors stuccoed to ceramic shells enables a mould to be created where small amounts of bronze, silver, gold and iron can be melted/cast in your very own home microwave oven. The whole process is described more elaborately here