Basic Oxygen Furnace

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

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

2

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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

6

…and here’s the link to Patrick’s (dragonriversteel) BOF thread:

http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/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!

7

Ken, I know I’m interested!

8

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:

[IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/album

9

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.

10

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}