Well whilst I was not feeling the best I could I wanted to get out and test the furnace. I had a couple of jobs to do on it first before I could start the fun part.
I had done quite a bit a couple of days ago but simply had to give up, but it just left the touch up jobs before I got out the angle grinder and changed the disc to a thin metal cutting one. The first item I want to convert to ingots is the bell housing for my Mk2 Jaguars gearbox rebuild. So three  pieces were cut off for the test.
With a little trepidation (in case the lining just fell apart!) I set the burner going and covered the top with some vermiculite panels I use when silver soldering. It would be useful to get an idea on length of time to melt various quantities so a note of the time started and when the melt was seen were recorded. No doubt with experience this will tail off but with my present level of experience all information helps.
After 15 minutes the pieces of aluminum had melted and the small crucible was only a third full so I cut off a further piece of the bell housing and added it to the crucible. When that piece had melted I added a small amount of salt and stirred that in. It was really exciting to see the change in the surface of the molten metal as it went very shiny. My understanding is this drives off the hydrogen (source myfordboy) and then added some soda crystals wrapped in aluminum foil) before stirring all in.
A quick visit indoors to see SWMBO and creep to get a spoon I could 'borrow' (permanently!) resulted in a quick modification before removing the amount of crud produced and then the crucible was removed before pouring the molten metal into the angle iron ingot moulds welded up some months ago.
Lessons learned after this impromptu first melt were :-
1.                  Better organisation and a walk through of the whole process before even lighting the burner would have sorted out many inefficiencies!
2.                Cut up sufficient material to melt before starting. Better to have to much than cut more whilst you are melting one load.
3.                The amount in solid is always less than that seen when molten so fill the crucible up above the top.
In general however the session was extremely successful since the furnace suffered no major damage and I had my first melt. Sorted!!!!
Now I need to focus on the whole purpose of building the furnace, that of making patterns for my own engines. I also have a few other ideas for items to be made in aluminum so we move on from the building to using stage.
Want to know more (including a video) then go to my main website. In the meantime here is my wonderful ingot (don't laugh!)
First aluminium ingot made during the test burn of my new made gas fired furnace.

First aluminium ingot made during the test burn of my new made gas fired furnace.