Basic Oxygen Furnace

[JMurr]

I am looking for a Basic Oxygen Furnace kit or plans in any scale. So far I have had NO luck. Any help would be appreciated.

 

TIA 

[chadw]

Trix used to make a kit, but it is now discontinued.  Scrattchbuilding/kitbashing would be the only way you could get one as far as I know.  You should look for posts by Dragonriversteel on this forum.  He recently scratchbuilt a large BOF and has posted pics of it several times.

[CSX_road_slug]

If you want a BOF mill on your layout, you'll need to scratchbuild one - Trix stopped producing their kit because it was so expensive and the market is so limited.  But at least the concept is fairly straightforward, so if you can find yourself enough styrene (or plexiglas, which I used on mine) and Plastruct tubing/fittings, you should be able to build a convincing-looking BOF building.  There's a guy named Mike Rabbett near Philadelphia, who sells HO-scale blueprints of all types of steel mill architecture and machinery.  I used his set of BOF drawings to build my mill.

I'll try to gather some construction pix and post them here later.

In the maentime, here's a link to a hobbyshop that specializes in steel mill-related models, Peach Creek Shops in Laurel, MD: http://www.peachcreekshops.com/page.php?id=steel&UID=UID=2008011918332471.255.193.37

The owner, John Glaab, had his mill layout featured in the 2008 issue of Model Railroad Planning; he can also put you in touch with Mike Rabbett and other specialty vendors of steel mill models. 

[caldreamer]

Go to Yahoo Steel group.  I belong, Great site for steel mill info.  If you email me offline, I will sned you a picture of the BOF at the Edgar Thompson Works and any others I have.

 

        

[novicerr]

do a search on this forum for Basic Oxygen Furnace. Found pics of the one dragon river built.

[CSX_road_slug]

do a search on this forum for Basic Oxygen Furnace. Found pics of the one dragon river built.

...and here's the link to Patrick's (dragonriversteel) BOF thread:

http://www.trains.com/trccs/forums/1263378/ShowPost.aspx 

If you're interested, I'll post a brief photo-essay on how I built my BOF mill - let me know! 

[chadw]

Ken, I know I'm interested!

[CSX_road_slug]

This is a recollection of how I kitbashed a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) facility in HO scale back in 1997, starting with a pair of Walthers Electric Furnace building kits and adding a large rectangular building in behind them.  My original intent was to 'suggest' the presence of a BOF mill, not to build a faithful replication of a prototype - I just didn't have the space or the patience for that!

I'll start by showing the two kitbashed EAF buildings, after I cutout the back walls and painted the insides with black primer to make the interior seem larger:









(These two buildings joined together, end-to-end, are identical to the shape of the BOF kit that Trix was marketing for awhile.  In fact the same tooling was used for the Walthers and Trix building kits.)

Prototype BOF complexes are HUGE, so I needed something extra: a large rectangular building on the rear.  I used 1/4"-thick Plexiglas because I [wrongly] believed it was necessary to maintain rigidity for a structure that size; turns out there are other lighter (and cheaper) materials available that work every bit as well.

Here is the cutting diagram for the walls of the rectangular section:



A few photos of the assembled rectangular bldg before I joined it to the twin Walthers buildings:





(The tin foil is there to contain 'stray' light from my illuminated BOF vessel - more about that later.)

The downcomer pipe is 1.25" outer-diameter Plastruct tubing and fittings, with Plastruct girders as the support for the bottom elbow.

I used Plastruct rectangular tubing for the additives conveyor, with a scratchbuilt styrene junction house on the roof.  I would have preferred to install the conveyor in two perpendicular halves like most prototypes I've seen, but I would've had to sacrifice some much-needed trackwork.

As a temporary measure, I used a Walthers Tri-State Power Plant building as the baghouse (receiving end of the downcomer).  One of these days I'll build a "real" baghouse.



A major spotting feature of a BOF building is its many cowl-style roof vents, which some people refer to as the "Pac Man" style, due to their end profile.  Nobody ever made any kits for these things, so I had to build my own.

First, I bought some 3" outer-diameter Plastruct tubing and cut it into 9-inch lengths. Then I sliced each of these lengthwise in two places (see end diagram), using the smaller channel piece.  I cut out pieces of .020" sheet styrene for the end covers.



Some views of a finished vent, ready to hang on the roof edge:







"Let There Be Light"

After a year or so, I decided to include an "active" BOF vessel; nothing highly detailed, just enough to resemble what a passerby might see walking past the building from 300-400 feet distance.

To withstand the heat of a 40-watt incandescent light bulb, I decided to form the vessel using self-hardening clay. It took me a few attempts before I got it looking somewhat correct.  Since nobody would see the bottom end, I left that open to accommodate the light bulb.

Here's a view of the vessel with the light bulb mounted inside:



To hide the shape of the bulb, I needed something that would also be able to withstand its heat. So I placed a thin film of yellow fiberglas insulation batting material over the vessel's mouth:



I was quite pleased with the "flames" effect:



The ladle that came with the Walthers EAF kit was way too tiny to pass as a charging ladle.  Luckily, a fellow steel modeler named Brandon Wehe* makes beautiful resin castings of charging ladles and scrap buckets, so I bought one of each from him:



* Brandon's stuff is always available at each annual Steel Mill Modelers' Meet (see the Peach Creek website for details). 

I needed to modify the "J" hooks on the Walthers heavy-duty overhead crane, to accommodate Brandon's larger charging buuckets:



Here are some views of the chaging ladle and the scrap bucket after painting:



 

Here's what everything looks like after joining all the buildings together (before I had installed the temporary "bag house"):



On the far end, I added a Walthers Rolling Mill building to serve as an ingot-teeming platform.  



After changing my era to late-1990's, I replaced my ingot processing with an "off-layout" continuous caster.  The location previously occupied by my ingot stripper now contains a loading facility for finished coils, providing outbound rail traffic to counterbalance all the inbound raw-materials trains.

I used the stairway and panels from the original EAF platform to serve as the charging platform on the BOF:

 

More pix of the finished mill are viewable at my website. 

 

[chadw]

That is awesome!  Especially the flames on the converter.  Although my layout won't have a BOF,  I will use many of these techniques in building the open hearth.  Thanks.

[dragonriversteel]

I am looking for a Basic Oxygen Furnace kit or plans in any scale. So far I have had NO luck. Any help would be appreciated.

 

TIA 

 

  Hello JMurr,

 

     I along with "Ironbelt {Ken Larson}",have scratch built are BOFs.As a matter of fact Ken helped me with the building diamentions.

 Have you ever scratch built anything ? Reason I'm asking is,all you need for a structure this size is a decent picture & the rough  size. Its not hard to scratch build one of these structures.There is alot of imagineering that goes with it though.I've never seen BOF's that look the same.

 Now on to what on earth to build it out of ? Ken can fill you in on his construction materials for his. Mine is a mix of all kinds of stuff. Oh...what scale are you going to build a BOF in ?Also depending on the amount of layout space you have.Your most likely going to have to compress the over all size of the structure.

 I compressed my BOF some-what,the size in HO measured in feet breaks down to this. 4' long X 4' wide X 3 1/2' high.Keep in mind this is compressed too! I made the structures backbone shell from corugated plastic signs.Covered in projection sceen TV covering {looks like HO scale sheet metal}.

 Shoot me an e-mail off forum and we can talk more in you would like tips.

 Regards

 

 Patrick

 Beaufort,SC

 Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}