Perlite, Silica Sand, and Fireclay

[mandoro]

Ok well, I know this isnt normal for this site, but for some reason my email is banned on backyardmetalcasting.com.

Anywho, I was wondering what places would have the items in the title. I went to home depot and couldnt find them. I just need a category I can look up in the phone book.

[mcraigl]

Should be able to get Perlite from nearly any garden center. Silica Sand? Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? Thought most all sand is Silica. Have no idea where to get fireclay.

[Don A]

Ditto on the perlite.

Check your Yellow Pages for pottery/ceramic supply dealers. That might give you a lead on the fire clay.

I'm pretty sure that the silica content of sand will vary. Some of it is just really fine rock. Not sure where to go on that one.


Don

[Dodge]

Another listing you might try is, refractories. You should be able to get silica sand anywhere they sell cement and mortar like stuff. I bought a bag at the local lumber yard to use to re-fill butt cans I made

[IronPuppet]

Just bought me a 60 liter bag of Perlite from Home Depot from the garden section.

IP

[ThomasPowers]

Well if you look out the window here you can see the pearlite mine; you have to drive a bit to get to the bentonite pit, sand you get from the river bank and wash it to remove the clay. So the Place to go would be Socorro NM.

[Alan B]

Silica sand should be available from any masonry supply outfit. It is used for concrete stucco applications as well as sand finished plaster.Sand is graded by particle size and silica content ( just for your information). The higher the silica content the higher the price.

[mandoro]

Thanks yall. Xxxx! I just came from home depot. It never occurred to me to look in the gardening section. How much was that bag IronPuppet?

Ok, Ill check the phone book and see what I can find. Maybe ill get lucky.

[IronPuppet]

I think it was $14 Canadian. I found it in the section with the bark mulch and soil in bags. I use it quite a lot to condition soil for my flower beds.

[Mike Turner]

Home depot should have silica sand last time I bought some they called it sand box sand.

[waianvil]

check out auto garages they use silica sand for there sand blasting to clean car parts and harbor freight also have it

[blkbear]

Here in Ottawa you can get fireclay at Home Depot as well. Go to the section where they have firebrick and other accessories for home wood burning stoves. You might have to wait a few weeks until the "fall" stuff comes back on the shelves.
You could also look for refractory cement. A commercially (contractor) oriented brick supply business might have bags of it. I did find a 40lb bag here in Ottawa but only after going to one of these contractor supply outlets. And then it took the yard guys almost 15 minutes to find it. Not much demand for it here so it was buried in a back corner. Places like Home Depot won't or generally don't carry such specialty material.

Brian

[Work-In-Progress]

All sand is silica sand. sand is silicon dioxide, what you want to look out for is that yes, play sand is silica sand but only the light brown sand colored sand, the white type is crushed limestone. I think its limestone, but bottom line is the white stuff isn't silica sand and is worthless in a refractory.

[ThomasPowers]

All sand is NOT silica sand; you can get coral based sands, feldspar based sands, magnitite based sands. Sand is more of a size indicator than a material indicator at least according to my Geology Profs when I got my BS degree in Geology!

[Work-In-Progress]

O.o, well rub that in my face. DON'T LISTEN TO THE N00B! but none the less, silica sand is no special thing, you find it anywere.

[Strine]

And the worst place to find it is in your budgie smugglers. By the cringe, I do hate the beach.

[Glenn]

Work-In-Progress
"Well rub that in my face. DON'T LISTEN TO THE N00B!"

IForgeIron is a family forum and will not tolerate personal attacks toward anyone. Noob or not, your posts are read and the information is given due consideration.

At this point in the discussion, please post any references to back up your side of the discussion, "All sand is silica sand. sand is silicon dioxide". This way we can go to the reference and read it. This is the reason Thomas posted he has a BS degree in Geology, as a reference for his statement.

I would be very interested in the "right or proper" sand for use as a flux. It has been suggested to use a mud dabbers next as flux. As soon as the summer is over, I plan to collect some of the nests and try forge welding with the material just to see if and how it works.

A quick google search turned up silica sand, black sand, green sand, calcareous sand, and industrial sand. None were mentioned for forge welding. Now I need help figuring out which sand to use, and if it is better or as good as borax and other fluxes for forge welding.

[gerald]

Some folks use FLINT SILICA which can be bought "dirt cheap" at pottery supply places. I'm not sure whether this could be called "sand" from a technical standpoint. If you try it, be sure to buy the coarsest grit you can find as the finer grits can become airborne and inhaled. The last I bought was 200 screen. I haven't been able to make it work as well as plain old Borax, though. The feller who turned me on to it, Bob Patrick, says to sling it into the fire as opposed to putting it on the weld area as you do with Borax.

[Candidquality]

Also recall reading somewhere that white sandy beaches are quartz sand and it seems to work fairly well. Next time I run into some i'll let you know how it works.

[Work-In-Progress]

Work-In-Progress
"Well rub that in my face. DON'T LISTEN TO THE N00B!"

IForgeIron is a family forum and will not tolerate personal attacks toward anyone. Noob or not, your posts are read and the information is given due consideration.

I wasn't trying to be rude or attack anyone, I ment it in a playful mannor, sorry for the confusion.
________________________

Glenn: Mud dabbers are horrible things, one stung my aunt and her leg swelled and said it was a terrable pain, also one dropped my dad. Besides that fact, how would a nest make a good flux? Does it have something to do what the mud dabber did to make the nest?

[Glenn]

The English language is flat when typed. You can not see the facial expressions that are many times needed to understand when something is said in fun or in being serious. Usually this can be corrected by or (grin) or LOL or other indications.

---------------

From what I understand the dabbers collect some fine (as in not course) material that some blacksmiths then collected and crush for use as a flux.

I collected a couple of nests before the new dabbers hatched and the nest was divided into compartments, one cocoon per compartment and the rest of the space packed with spiders. The spiders were quite alive and moving but under the influence of something putting them in some sort of suspended state.

You will need to wait till the young dabbers have hatched and then remove the dabber cocoons and any spiders left in the nest (grin).

I would guess that the dabbers should be gone by fall, and can report on the nest as a flux after some testing.

[ThomasPowers]

I was not offended; I was worried that I had offended. The one thing I have learned from experience is that catagorical statements are almost always wrong--life the universe and everything is often so weird that there is almost always an exception to anything you can think of.

Glenn: on the use of dabbers (mud daubers where I come from?) as an inactive flux it should work best for wrought iron that takes real high temps needed to liquify the scale really well and then perhaps mild steel. it will probably be the least useful for high carbon steels which don't like the high temps. (the japanese sword forgers use a clay ash mixture, though I will note that they start at almost 2% carbon content and after many welding cycles end up at 0.5% so decarb is not only tolerated but expected)

[Glenn]

Thanks Thomas, I had mild steel in mind to see if it worked for that application.

[Bentiron1946]

Back on sand, here in the Phoenix Home Depot I can get "silica sand" which is a graded white quartz like sand that is very different from "play sand" which is nothing more then a sterilized "masonry sand". Perelite is sold in the garden section in huge bags at a very reasonable price. I have never found fire clay at my local Home Depot nor fire bricks. For them I need to go to a masonry supply yard. Is this guy building a forge bottom or melting furnace? Collecting Mud Dauber nest for a flux sure seems like a lot of work. If you want to spare the life of the grub wait until spring when they hatch and have consumed the spider. That way the next generation of wasp are ready to prey on garden pests.

[ThomasPowers]

Spiders prey on garden pests too; we had a lovely argiope by the front door this morning...

Of course I don't think I would try that trick with a tarantula hawk!