Does the lower egg half expand when hot?

RRP said:

speed51133 said:

I am cutting a hole in a table for the egg. The table is concrete. Does anyone know if the bottom half of the egg expands when hot? Any idea how much?

I highly doubt any ceramic that has already been fired and glazed can expand! Now, a cast iron skillet, or cast iron Dutch oven? Sure! but a ceramic BGE base...NO WAY! that's the reason it is fired ceramic!

 There was the case of the old mini eggs with the ring stand. There were some pics of minis neatly circumscribed  where the ring stand hit the base. And the bottom of the mini fell off. 

RRP said:

speed51133 said:

I am cutting a hole in a table for the egg. The table is concrete. Does anyone know if the bottom half of the egg expands when hot? Any idea how much?

I highly doubt any ceramic that has already been fired and glazed can expand! Now, a cast iron skillet, or cast iron Dutch oven? Sure! but a ceramic BGE base...NO WAY! that's the reason it is fired ceramic!

The Big Green Egg company itself says that it expands Ron, just less than other ceramics.  
Most ceramics, even fired ones, have positive CTEs.  

Of course the concrete will expand too as it heats, so you have some wiggle room there.

Anyway, a 1/2” gap sounds reasonable to me.  Mind the gap.

Does it expand? Of course it does...

JohnInCarolina said:

Gents the cracks that form in just about everyone’s BGE are evidence that they expand while heated.  The expansion isn’t uniform in the radial direction which gives rise to large tensile stresses and thus, fracture.  

Fracture mechanics at its best on the forum.  You could learn a lot here...

Please excuse my stupidity. Heated metal expands but I just never knew that fired ceramics do as well! Nice to learn something new every day, huh? 

Well maybe split the difference and go with 1/4”.

I’m reminded of the old story of a pilot and co-pilot flying and approaching a mountain range. They can’t agree on the height of the range.  The pilot thinks it’s 14,000 ft, and the co-pilot thinks it’s 18,000 ft.  So the pilot says, well, since we aren’t sure, let’s just split the difference and fly at 16,000 ft.

alaskanassasin said:

JohnInCarolina said:

Well maybe split the difference and go with 1/4”.

I’m reminded of the old story of a pilot and co-pilot flying and approaching a mountain range. They can’t agree on the height of the range.  The pilot thinks it’s 14,000 ft, and the co-pilot thinks it’s 18,000 ft.  So the pilot says, well, since we aren’t sure, let’s just split the difference and fly at 16,000 ft.

 Black box recording?

How did you guess?  

@caliking actually I do have a gap between the egg and the SS tabletop.  However, it's sealed with a high temp clear flexible silicone.  I originally sealed it to lessen movement of the egg  when rolling it around etc.  I never really move it about so.... But, it does make for an easy cleanup on the table surface. The outer edge on the table top around the egg do get hot during high heat situations.  

I know that’s right 

speed51133 said:

thanks for the flag

LMAO welcome to my world man!   Wasn't me by the way.  That post seems fairly innocuous to me, I don't know why it would be flagged.  But then just about anything gets flagged these days by the anonymous cowards. 

Anyway, good luck with the table.  You probably realized this already, but if you find that the gap you put in isn't quite large enough, you can always raise up the egg a little bit (with a spacer or the little nest thing) to give you a little more clearance.  

This was a much friendlier place before the anonymous flag function 

I’m just glad @botch lives 2,000 miles away because he too may expand when he gets hot.

I would think that if the egg is expanding/contracting, there would be cracks in the glaze. I've had my egg for 25 yrs and the glaze looks like the day I bought it.