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Has anyone made Water Glass? I want to make some with Lye (drain cleaner), Silica (kitty litter) and distilled water. I hope it will bind Perlite in a form to male a round riser for a rocket heater. It's all new for me but I think it would make a light weight very insulating riser. Not sure how well it will hold together.

I've never made any Bob, I just use the furnace cement to provide the SoSi along with some other stuff it adds to the mix. You can find SoSi on Amazon, check it out...

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... m+silicate

I think you will still need clay, although I haven't tried what you are proposing. It sure would be light without it, I think it's worth experimenting with.

I just thought of this post now-- during my experimenting tonight I needed to seal between a brick I was using to limit the air into the feed tunnel and grabbed perlite and some water glass. So I'll see anyway how it dries and hardens.

But its sold in the stores here to bind šamot-- the stuff firebricks are made out of, I guess fireclay. And it and the šamot are mixed to fix cracks in the firebricks found inside of steel woodburning stove fireboxes.

You are probably better off, if you decide to use water glass, to find a chemical supplier in your area selling it.

Here is a video I made showing the process of making water glass. This batch was just the last of my ingredients, so not exactly sure of the amounts (about half of the usual batch). The usual batch was 1000 milliliters of water, 400 grams of lye and 600 grams of silica gel. This makes 1000 milliliters of silica gel (1+1=1), or less if you take too long, boiling away trying to get big chunks of silica gel to dissolve.

Although, I have usually ended up with some extra silica gel, about 50-80 grams, by the time the mixture is getting pretty thick. Continuing to add silica gel past a certain point will make the water glass so thick, that once cooled it won't pour out of the bottle. Warming it will help get it to flow. I have combined and heated a batch that was too thick into a batch that was in-progress, seemingly without any problems.

Thanks for the reply David. I have been watching your progress on that post, please keep the updates coming as to how well it takes the heat. I have made 2 L of water glass,

I'm replying with my phone and can't input much per post. I was amazed by how hard your casting is. Keep it up.

Yeah, that really impressed me as well. I couldn't believe it when he started tapping on it with the hookaroon. Nice work David.