OK, There has been a lot of interest in ceramic blanket, refractory coatings, and high temp gasket materials. I started this thread to have a place to put information about materials and sources. They are not metal but compliment the metal parts of a gasifier system. Lots of room for new experiments!
Mike
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Here is a link…
I have not purchased from this store.
They have the Simwool Rigidizer Al Frick posted.
http://stores.ebay.com/simondstore/
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Here is the one I posted a few days ago… I have not purchased from them either.
http://stores.ebay.com/heatsafeonline/CERAMIC-FIBER-BLANKET-/_i.html?_fsub=9904375014
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I think most any of the ceramic blanket material wood work and last over 5 or 10 thousan miles as been used by paul m and justin .Once the blanket gets afew coats of wood rosens baked on it it holds up in place allmost like cement but is a lighter way too go.And i may sleeve my unit with a home made metal like screen and see how long the metal last.
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I am using some old blanket material , we think it was Kwool , anyway its taken out of a very large old oven and it very hard and brittle now after years of use , the other day I noticed that the area around my nozzle tube on my charcoal gasifier was glowing red hot , and so suspect there was a pin hole through the welding that has after 3 years decided to allow air in , as I didn’t have any high temp red silicone to hand , once the gasifier had cooled down I crumbed up some of the kwool and mixed it with everyday bathroom silicone like a paste and covered around the nozzle weld , 4 days running and seems to be holding up very well indeed .
Dave
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Thanks dave thats good too know, that the blankets are really lasting that long.
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I just ran across this video and I think you all here might find this quite interesting. Pretty amazing stuff and its easy to make. I will indeed be playing with this stuff 
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I will be experimenting with this stuff too 
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I remember seeing the inventor demonstrating starlite back in the 90s. He claimed it could withstand a nuclear flash. Great to see it’s not lost, or at least there’s something similar. I don’t recall his stuff blackening like that, but maybe I’m not recalling correctly. Outstanding performance anyways…
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Thank you for sharing. I didn’t realize carbon foam was that easy to make… I was just at meijer swears
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Interesting, but the material seems to be being consumed, so I don’t know how long it would be effective.
Maybe once all of the corn starch is gone the “carbon foam” stays there?
Also his “10,000 degree C” claim must be a bit off since carbon sublimes at 3550° C (at atmospheric pressure).
Pete Stanaitis
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I think the trick is exposure time. I haven’t seen any long term exposure. A 10k degree nuclear blast is only a split second. The problem is the layers flake off. It is similar to biscuits you put in the oven on broil, the tops burn and the bottoms never cook. They just dry out hard as a rock.
The idea of using a foam or microbubble isn’t new. I mean insulation itself is really based on the principle of trapping air, and preventing conduction of the heat. A large window conducts more heat then a window made up with small panes of glass. or fluffed insulation conducts less then insulation that is packed down or has settled.
Here is a guy that is repeating the experiments but the longest test time is 6 minutes.
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I just watched a demonstration of the original material, it hardly seems to blacken. It could have been differently formulated, working on different principles.
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I suspect the original material worked on the same principles, but was a different material. The bigger question is how to get it to stick together so it doesn’t flake off so you can actually use it for something beyond a temporary fire retardant.
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I wonder if using sodium silicate would work as a better bonding solution to keep it together?
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I also watched that video the other day and within the hour i was in the kitchen kneading and rolling away ,i did not have any corn starch to hand so i used plain flour instead and it was lumpy as anything so i mixed a little water in to smooth it out and rolled an egg in it and then a Pattie and left it over night to dry out a little, and first thing this morning i am sat with it in my hand with a gas gun pointed right at it ! seemed to work pretty good for me too .
If you read the story of Starlite you will see there is nothing else like it in the world as he did not allow the recipe for his discovery to fall into the hands of governments or greedy corporations , and when he died he took it with him to the grave , although there was mention that family members also knew how to make it , but non of them have ever come forward .
The starlite demo i watched on Tomorrows world tv show at the time showed that when heated it in fact glowed white hot almost translucent , but within a second of taking the torch away it was cool to the touch .
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I read through the link with much interest Sean. Lots of good discussion there. It seems the guy was a bit of a salesman, and couldn’t actually deliver a functional product. There’s mention in some sources about boron, and perhaps up to 20 different dry ingredients, but PVA glue seems to be the binder. Such a product could work for temporary protection but not much more.
I still see differences in the way the original composition behaved under a torch compared to the recreations, but the takeaway I get is it isn’t a long term refractory material one can rely on.
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I don’t think he was a bit of a salesman at all , and i think its what reports you read on the subject , from what i have read of the man and his material over the years has been that he allowed NASA , Boeing and other government bodies to do there tests on the material , but only while he was there and only with what he took along and he always took away the Starlite for fear of them being able to do a reverse engineering job on it .
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There’s some discussion about the various claims and documentation on the site Sean posted. It seems some people have offered some crude fakes of NASA memos, etc, though it does seem true that some fairly intense tests were done. I do tend to believe that his composition had something special about it, but scepticism seems the course until there’s a tangible product.
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That was my first thought too. My second thought was plaster. My third one was to just use dextrin so I could skip the glue because I’m cheap . But it flexes when it bubbles so it has to be somewhat pliable i would think…
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