tinkertim Posted November 12, 2020 Share Posted November 12, 2020 Hi NoGood..., The Rigidizer I used was colloidal Silica powder mixed into water, with some food dye added, so you can see where you've sprayed. Once the blanket is coated you have to evaporate off the water by gentle heating with a hand-held burner. Once steam stops coming off the blanket, you are left with microscopic clumps of Silica particles at the points where the ceramic fibres in your blanket touch each other. Air-drying will not rigidise the blanket, it needs to be "fired", so you now want to heat the blanket to melt these clumps of Silica particles so they fuse your ceramic fibres together and give the rigidising effect you want. I manually moved my burner slowly over the whole inner surface of the blanket until every point had reached a dull orange at some point, and I then let it cool. It also helped that the areas that were heated fully then lost their food colour and went off-white. After this, you could touch the inner surface of the blanket and it felt stiff, and resisted light pressure. This is now a rigidised blanket, and ready for your refractory coating, etc. Hope this helps, Tink! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.