I just picked up the new fireback kit for my Vermont Castings Encore. With the crazy price VC is charging now for the refractory package, there had been speculation here a while back about how hard it would be to make one, so I took it over to a friend who builds glassblowing kilns and works a lot with refractory. He confirmed that it would be a very easy job - just cut the pieces to size, apply the cement, the screw them together with sheetrock screws - if one could find the board. He called his refractory supplier, and found the board was available. for about $14 a board foot (the box would take about 6 s.f. ). So it would be cost effective. However, the catch is, they only sell it by the full box, which holds 60 sf/$850. Since I don't want to go into production, that pretty much rules it out.
The other interesting thing is the SS heat exchanger in the kit. This goes on the front of the refractory assembly, and is, from my experience, the major culprit in most refractory assembly failures in that it seems to distort as it ages, flexing about and destroying the refractory assembly in the process. The old one was a simple piece of surprisingly thin SS sheet with three bends in it, so I was going to take it to a sheet metal shop and have spare run off while I had the new one for a pattern. However, the new one turns out to be made of two seperate pieces, bent and welded together. This puts a extra couple bends in it, and a doubled section, which ought to considerably improve rigidity and resistance to distortion. Howver, it will also make it consideralby more difficult to clone so I may have to give up on that idea too.
The other interesting thing is the SS heat exchanger in the kit. This goes on the front of the refractory assembly, and is, from my experience, the major culprit in most refractory assembly failures in that it seems to distort as it ages, flexing about and destroying the refractory assembly in the process. The old one was a simple piece of surprisingly thin SS sheet with three bends in it, so I was going to take it to a sheet metal shop and have spare run off while I had the new one for a pattern. However, the new one turns out to be made of two seperate pieces, bent and welded together. This puts a extra couple bends in it, and a doubled section, which ought to considerably improve rigidity and resistance to distortion. Howver, it will also make it consideralby more difficult to clone so I may have to give up on that idea too.
