[TheForge] Drilling angles etc/ now sulfur

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Hi Bruce;
I've used sulfur a number of times successfully to set steel into stone 
and it lasts indefinitely as far as i know.
I don't recall it's turning red when molten though.
I have used garden sulfur. There used to be a huge pile under a chute at 
a local refinery and no one minded if i filled 5 gallon buckets with it. 
It was selling for about $10/# then.
As a poured liquid ( about 350* ?)it's tolerant of impurities but not of 
moisture ( like poured metal with moisture...bad). Mix it with any dry 
filler you like ( talk/sand/fiberglass, etc) to gain other properties 
and some fire resistance.
The old tomb stone carver who showed me how, would chisel a hole in 
stone about 3" deep and make the bottom of the hole lopsided ( keying) 
and larger than the neck, to mechanically lock in the steel/sulfur.
Then he'd upset the end of the steel and key it too.
The hole in the stone was cleaned out with air and heated slowly along 
with the end of the steel, till hot to the touch. The sulfur was slowly 
heated in an old tin can being careful not to expose the powder to 
direct flame or overheat the bottom of the can.
The steel was placed and braced and the molten sulfur was poured in the 
hole once it was freely liquid....a consistency of light cream. As the 
sulfur cooled, more was added to the top to compensate for shrinkage.
Do this outdoors with a cross breeze and spatter protection.
The stuff doesn't burn hot, but persistently, and the fumes are awful at 
best.
The resulting solid, is strong, somewhat brittle and very acid resistant.
I once made a chair mounted on leaf springs with a vertical shaft that 
terminated in a flat beach rock for the seat. The shaft was set in 
sulfur in a hole on the underside of the rock and the base had foot 
rests. I took it to the RP Faires and folks hopped it all over the place 
through 2 faires before it finally sold. Years later i repaired it when 
one of the leaf springs finally broke and returned it to service. It 
wasn't possible to remove the steel from the rock without heating it or 
chiseling the sulfur out.
If you add a plasticizor to the melt ( i used to use dicyclopentadine, 
but  styrene would do. I suspect you could just add styrofoam to the 
melt) it offsets the brittleness. Add fiberglass and it's really strong! 
a fairly thin shell is impressively durable....used in compound curves 
like ferrocement it's awesome! It's very compatible with steel 
reinforcement.
Read that it had 2 x the compressive strength and 5 times the tensile 
strength of concrete.
They were melting it in 55 gallon barrels with wood fires in one account.
Soak cardboard in the molten, plasticized sulfur and it's a cheap 
substitute for corrugated steel for roofing applications and the like.
The stuff makes strong, durable acid vats too.
Read they were foaming it by stirring in old exposed plaster of paris 
powder. The moisture in the plaster caused it to foam like crazy. The 
foam was poured as an insulating, stiff, waterproof, underlayer for 
roadbeds in Alaska ( hi Frosty) and under house slabs and foundations.
Because it burns , it needs to be covered with cement or plaster or put 
underground.
Bet that's more than you wanted to know about sulfur....pf

Bruce Freeman wrote:
> I never quite understood the use of molten sulfur.  The stuff goes
> from a yellow powder to a red liquid, changing molecular form as it
> does.  But when it cools, it goes back to yellow solid, and in my
> limited experiences, breaks into a powder.  I haven't played with the
> stuff for many years.  Anyone have experience using it to set posts?
> Damned sight cheaper than epoxy if it works.  (Sulfur is available for
> gardening at maybe $10/5 lb.
> 
> Lead wool is also available, but kinda pricey at $30/5 lb.  Remember
> that lead is over 5x the density of sulfur.
> 
> Makes me wonder whether a cheapie version of niello could be used.
> Niello is a mixed sulfide of silver, copper and lead (IIRC), and is a
> black plastic-like substance used to ornament silverwork.  Maybe lead
> sulfide or a mixed base-metal sulfide would have similar properties an
> could be used for setting posts.  I've never heard of this being done.
> 
> One other note:  Epoxy's chief virtue is its bonding. The cost of
> using epoxy can be greatly reduced by the use of fillers - nonepoxy
> material that takes up space and is bound together by the epoxy.
> Clean sand comes to mind as a possible filler - cheap, strong.
> 
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer
> <artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
>> Molten sulfur was traditionally used as well...cheap and quick setting .
>>
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