for a school project i am planning to make jewelry and armor out of metal, and ive seen the hacksmiths (and others) videos on mini arc furnaces. i am planning to build one, would anyone know how if using thin walls on the box would end in it ither exploding, or cracking, or something worce?

thx for viewing this if anyone dose

45 minutes ago, Thomas H Hardie said:

thx for viewing this if anyone dose

You have already had 13 views and I bet someone who is familiar with carbon arc welding will chime in. It will help to know your general location too.

Seems like a terrible way to go for armour making. Why do you want to go that route?   Have you researched Eric Thing's propane armour burner set up?  For details on Armour making I strongly suggest asking over at armourarchive.org  and yes it's the English spelling of armour.

Combining jewelry with armour making is like asking about making a great mileage commuter car that will also hold 40 cu yards of gravel...  Quite different specs for one item to fill.

6 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Seems like a terrible way to go for armour making.

the armor making is a future goal, im mainly going to make jewelry, and i'm also trying to do it electric because of xxxx school safety stuff. im maily just wanting to know about whether its a good idea to make thinner walls.

thx for seeing this anyway

  School safety "stuff" is there for a reason.  Your way of going about things sounds ominious to me.  Please be careful.

Just now, Nodebt said:

ominious

i just mean im trying to do this cheaply and without having a teacher right next to me the hole time

  I understand, and I have been there.  There is a right way to do these things, and a wrong way.  The safe path is best.  I'm sorry, I have no input on electric arc furnaces. 

Doing it cheaply is often the most expensive way to go about it!  They make small electric powered foundry units that look rather like a thermos bottle and will melt jewelry metals and are easy to use and pour from. They don't use arc; but rather resistance units.  I see one that will melt 1kg of metal selling over here for US$650

Electric arc is VERY hard on crucibles due to thermal shock and oxidation; what you save building your own might quickly be eaten up in having to replace crucibles all the time.  (I melt silver (fine and sterling), copper, brass, bronze in my coal forge for casting jewelry and knife fittings.)

This reminds me of all the people who tell us they can't afford to buy proper refractories and so want to use non-insulating ones never considering that the cost of refractory is a fraction of the cost of fuel used to heat the forge over the life of the lining.  The old "I can't afford to spend $20 on refractory but I can afford to spend an extra $200 on fuel?" 

ok,  i didnt think about that, thanks

No we want you to do stuff and succeed at doing it; but there are some ideas that have been previously tried and found wanting...Is there any university art departments near you that hace jewelry making classes "out of hours" you can take to lean the details AND use THEIR equipment?  Over here local community colleges often offer such classes.  I learned my casting in an Out of Hours class held at a university Fine Arts department's casting facility.