Preventing heat loss and pan side burn between Syrup and Flue pans

[tgormley358]

I took an opportunity to clean my syrup pan last night before boiling, and found the vertical side which faces the flue pan to be burned black and very hard to clean. It was bad enough that i decided against turning the pan around for my next boil since i didn't want the black side facing out and didn't want to burn the other, good side like this one. This is a new 2x5 Lapierre Jr raised flue evaporator. When i initially placed the pans on the evaporator, they didn't link up tightly so there's been a 1/8" gap between them which seems to widen to 1/4" during boiling, so i lose some heat through that gap and obviously this blackened that side of the pans. So a couple questions:

1. how do you prevent the above heat loss and blackening of pan vertical sides where syrup and flue pan meet? Do you glue on some blanket at the bottom of the pans to prevent heat going up?

2. how do you clean off the heavy blackening of a pan like this to restore the SS?

[Buddy 58]

You need to put some ceramic blanket between them . I have to on my 3x10 . the ceramic blanket I have is 1 inch thick , I split it in half . works good .

[tgormley358]

Buddy, do you just lay it in there and jam the pans together, or do you use an adhesive to hold it in place?

[jdbrown20]

I have found if you get the flue pan damp, the ceramic blanket will stick to it. Then you can put the syrup pan in, and press it up against the ceramic blanket nice and tight.

[maple flats]

My Thor pans have about 1/4" space and the rig came with a woven gasket for there to seal it up. My previous rig was a Grimm and that was used with a 1" thick ceramic gasket, 4" tall.

[Buddy 58]

Buddy, do you just lay it in there and jam the pans together, or do you use an adhesive to hold it in place? I just put it between the pans and hook things back up , others added their good ways of doing it , lets see what works for you , let us know - good luck .

[blaircountysugarin85]

Smoky lake makes a gasket just for that it's like a 1/8 x 1 or 2" piece of flat steel wrapped in I think ceramic gasket and what looks like woven pan gasket. Looks like a good setup

[EBG18T]

I just put the same 2 inch wide gasket material I put between the pan and the evaporator between the 2 pans. Seems to work ok.


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[Haynes Forest Products]

The trick is to keep the gasket in place long enough to jam the pans together. What works well is lay a metal rod or wood dowel down as a bridge from one side of the arch to the other and lay the strip of fire blanket on top then push the pans together and remove the rod. Bingo Bango.