After about 9 months I have completed my oven. It did not take me many hours to build it I probably spent more time scrounging materials than actual building. The oven may a little overkill but I had most of the materials on hand and I only wanted to build the oven once.
Here are some pics of the oven, the 30 inch rifle barrel is in the oven to give it some scale. I believe the oven is tall enough for most handheld rifles.
The oven started life in a bakery as a proofing oven for making bread or a warming oven to keep food warm for a caterer. The oven was in rough shape when I saw it at an auction site and I was able to get it locally for $22.00. When I got it it would hold a temperature of about 150° F on a warm day in the Summer so I needed to add some heat to get it up to 300° F or higher.
Given that I needed a higher temperature than originally designed for I decided to add additional insulation. The inside walls, including the door, have an additional 2" of high temp acoustic board insulation rated to about 1,200° F. I decided to face the insulation with sheet metal to reduce the amount of fibers inside the oven that might get on the finish of the gun parts.
I had built a heater control unit, the box sitting on top of the the oven, to drive my smoker for curing summer sausage. When I built the controller me intent was for it to be portable. All I have to do to move it is to pull the thermocouple from the oven or smoker and put it into the unit I want heated. I supply 220 volts to the box and I have 2 120 volt outlet that I plug electric heating units into. The PID controller controls these by turning on two solid state relays that drive the heating units. For heating units I ordered two units from a supply house on the net.
The oven will hold up to 320° F with a temperature variation of +/- 1-2° and up tp 400° F +/- 3°, I think that will work ok.
I have not used the oven yet for coating any guns, I ordered some Norell's moly resin to finish up some projects. I will post pics of the finished results when done.
Here are some pics of the oven, the 30 inch rifle barrel is in the oven to give it some scale. I believe the oven is tall enough for most handheld rifles.
The oven started life in a bakery as a proofing oven for making bread or a warming oven to keep food warm for a caterer. The oven was in rough shape when I saw it at an auction site and I was able to get it locally for $22.00. When I got it it would hold a temperature of about 150° F on a warm day in the Summer so I needed to add some heat to get it up to 300° F or higher.
Given that I needed a higher temperature than originally designed for I decided to add additional insulation. The inside walls, including the door, have an additional 2" of high temp acoustic board insulation rated to about 1,200° F. I decided to face the insulation with sheet metal to reduce the amount of fibers inside the oven that might get on the finish of the gun parts.
I had built a heater control unit, the box sitting on top of the the oven, to drive my smoker for curing summer sausage. When I built the controller me intent was for it to be portable. All I have to do to move it is to pull the thermocouple from the oven or smoker and put it into the unit I want heated. I supply 220 volts to the box and I have 2 120 volt outlet that I plug electric heating units into. The PID controller controls these by turning on two solid state relays that drive the heating units. For heating units I ordered two units from a supply house on the net.
The oven will hold up to 320° F with a temperature variation of +/- 1-2° and up tp 400° F +/- 3°, I think that will work ok.
I have not used the oven yet for coating any guns, I ordered some Norell's moly resin to finish up some projects. I will post pics of the finished results when done.
