foundry hobby?

[zopi]

anyone here play in the fire? casting aluminum, bronze, iron?

I got interested a few years ago and am finally making some scrap aluminum disappear...I built a stack melter this afternoon and broke some old castings down to basically chilled aluminum shot..to be remelted and poured int molds.

made an aluminum railroad spike the other day..just because...paint it black and toss it to your buddy..funny.

a small project I want to do is to cast a pointer to go on the up/down scale of the mill...and probably powder coat it orange..Sure, I could just bend a piece of tin, but where is the challenge in that?  :D

another idea that I have not really noodled to completion is the bloody head stow pin on the mill, which means you have to take the ramps off of the mill in order to saw below two inches or so..irritating at best..

[shelbycharger400]

are you using a propane heater to heat the cruceable?

checkout backyard metalcasters website.
backyardmetalcasting.com
i havent got around to building mine yet.

[zopi]

yeah, Lionel Oliver owns that page, and I am a member at the alloy avenue forum..
heh..burners..I helped Ron Reil in his early stages of burner design..then he got all technical and lost me..

I am just using solid fuel for now, on the premise that a decent answer now is better than a perfect answer later..besides, I will probably cast the endbell/jet supports for the burner before I ever go there...lol. literally the only thing I have ever cast is that railroad spike and some fishing sinkers. (gotta buddy who is an avid fisherman..I ought to cast him some aluminum sinkers and slip them in on him..) come to think of it, I could make my own bloody sinker molds..muzzleloader rounds...etc.

[shelbycharger400]

aluminum sinkers... i bet that would fool him at first. i havent looked up the aluminum to lead conversion for weight but im thinking  they would have to be 3 to 4x the size to work

[zopi]

what would be funny is if he tied on on and tried to cast...zzziiinnggg!

worth money.

[Taylortractornut]

I have a Ron Reil foundry a freind and I built.    Ive casted alot of things but not lately.   I use lost foam casting. 

[zopi]

Ugh...how can you stand the smell?

Making patterns is a pain...but at least if I have a wood pattern and the casting goes south, I can remold and do it again...

Heh...Maca makes a nice aluminum dutch oven...I ought to pattern one of my Lodges and cast it..

[Taylortractornut]

I use a dust collector to vent it from my shop.    I have a friend that used to have a 5 axis cnc router and he would make my forms.     I ve used wax to.        Im using petrobond sand.   Id like to have a better box built to use wood  patterns. to.   I m also looking at building a bigger foundry from a part of a foundry that came from a Ford casting plant.     I want to be able to cast iron and steel one day.     If I ever get my little lathe back together I want to  cast a model steam engine. 

[zopi]

I may mess with iron someday, just seems more trouble than it is worth...I am having fun with the aluminum and there are a bunch of things I can do with that.

I would like to do an engine or two eventually...but my skills are not there yet..something 2.5" x 3" bore to stroke....would be cool to make a functional quarter scale circle mill...

Am sort of  working my head around a ten or twelve inch single blade edger...can sort of visualize the inner workings but need to work out the details...probably start with the blade shafing out of a commercial mower, and just cast a bearing housing the right shape...most of the rest can be done as weldments.

[Barebuttminer]

anyone here play in the fire? casting aluminum, bronze, iron?

Zopi:
As a mater of fact I have.
Made my first aluminum pour in middle school metal shop class making mail box name plates. In the late '70s, after taking a foundry class at a local collage and rekindling my desire to work with metal, I built a small furnace using Gingery's Build a Charcoal Furnace book available from Lindsay's Technical Publications http://www.lindsaybks.com/. Lindsay has a lot of old out of print books covering the lost arts.
I used this furnace to make motorcycle parts Back then I was breaking a lot of levers and case covers on my dirt squirt and making my own seamed to be the least expensive way to go not to mention the satisfaction of being able to say I made that myself.
In the early 80s I built a much larger furnace using fire brick and refractory cement I could melt 70 pounds of aluminum in that furnace. My largest casting was a 40 pound drilling table for a computerized XYZ drill press that I built to drill holes in printed circuit boards.
I make my patterns from wood using a 3/16's shrink ruler. Aluminum will shrink 3/16" per foot from the molten state to a solid so if you are making your own patterns they need to be over sized to compensate for the shrinkage.
Beer cans are a good source for aluminum however they are to soft for making machine parts. Adding silicone to your melt will make a harder casting. If you use beer cans you can add some metal from old pistons to your melt to increase the silicon content.
One more thing that is seldom mentioned is that you should use a flux and a degassing agent to clean and remove impurities from the metal before your pour.
I find great satisfaction in making my own tools & parts and I'm sure you will too.
Good luck with your new found hobby
BBM

[Taylortractornut]

BBM I use a dross powedr for degassing,  Its a mix of 2 fluxes.    At work I pick up cut off of aluminum tubing thats too small for them to  make it to the recycle bin.         

[pineywoods]

I messed around with casting aluminum once upon a time. Built a furnace out of an old propane fired hot water heater. I found pop and beer cans to consist of half aluminum and half paint. Old lawn mower engine crank cases worked real well. Had some pro's tell me that the best source for aluminum to melt down was ford transmission cases. I never did find a source for decent casting sand. No foundries here. Mostly I just poured various shaped ingots and then used a lathe and milling machine. I have a couple of the Dave gingery books somewhere.

[Don_Papenburg]

BBM , I use pistons mostly and other cast aluminum parts for my casting.
  What do you use for degassing ?   The last pours that I made I just scimmed and poured .  They were small parts so I did not have any problems. 
My next project is to pour four hubcaps for my timber tiger.

[SPIKER]

We built a small aluminum smelter using weed burner a large pipe wrapped with ka-o-wool the bottom was capped and a hole cut in just above the bottom. the weed burner was hooked up to dual fork lift propane tanks.   we used cut off hunks of very good aluminum scrap hunks/drops from plate aluminum.    We used a smaller pipe w bottom welded on for a crucifiable.   started out melting some cans and extruded parts/cut off drops.   It was a small use job to cast a harley exhaust pipe/muffler end for a tool that would push in the inner pipe into the exhaust for welding (Harley Muffler manufacture.)   Worked out real well the material was soft enough to not scratch the chrome and not damage a flat black coating.

mark

[Manorwood]

I built a pair of Gingery furnaces (one for me, one for a friend) in conjunction with my friend.  I eventually sold mine and built a much bigger one.  Haven't been able to cast for quite a while.  To see me or one of the other Edmonton hobby group casting, go the Estevan, Saskatchewan model engineering show.  A great get together.  http://estevanmodelengineeringshow.com/ (the show is not a commercial venture, so I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting the link).  We get kids casting at the show, and Al Schoepp even had one young lad who had been casting by himself for years do the teacup, saucer, spoon casting.  http://schoepp.hylands.net/coffecup.html  Again, not a commercial site.  Al is a (married in) relative, so... we get up to mischief by times.  BTW, neither Al nor I have been able to go in a couple of years, but another fellow has taken over.

I'm also very leery of degassing.  I had an explosion.  Was not good.  I took to degassing using argon with a SS wand and a fine valve.  Much safer than the solid degassing options.  IF you insist on degassing with solids (powders, tablets, whatever) please make sure you heat it very, very well to drive off moisture.  It's amazing how fast a full crucible turns empty.

I've used petrobond and green sand, and prefer the green sand (added bonus of useable with iron if you decide to cast iron... too darned hot for me except for special occassions).  Much less messy.  A fluffer makes prep time very quick too.  Pouring at the lowest possible temperature also helps reduce gas issues.  We use a cheap multimeter with a thermocouple in a SS tube for that. 

Best source of aluminum I have found is pistons.  Test unknown "aluminum" with vinegar to make sure it isn't magnesium.  That gets exciting by times...

[zopi]

jeez..Sorry I missed all these replies...degas with washing soda..not baking soda, you want sodium carbonate. not sodium bicarb...flux aluminum with non iodized table salt..little foil packet pushed to the bottom of the melt with the stir stick or skimmer.
older Ford castings rock..all the aluminum out of that dump trailer project donor went through my stack melter and made shiny clean blobs.
my furnace went together today...I have one more pattern to make before I cast again...that sector arm for my sawmill..

I have an idea for a plug cast to fit in the top of the WM standard stabilizer jack..with a sleeve to accept a long bolt..  I may wind up with the first LT-15 with fine adjust outriggers. still have some fiddling to do with the design though. I am planning to use the original levelers in the bottom of the jacks..

Thanks for the replies..I figured there would be a few on here..simply too broad an array of skills here to have neglected foundry.

[zopi]

I read quite a bit about Al several years ago, when I first got interested in metalwork.

[Barebuttminer]

Don;
When I was melting aluminum I used chloride tablets for degassing and a drossing cover flux.
I say was because I haven't made a pour in over 30 years. A very disgruntled ex-wife destroyed most of my foundry equipment, among other things, with an 8lb sledge hammer. I still have about 800lbs of petrobond and a few casting flasks, guess the ex didn't know that pounding sand with a hammer won't hurt it.

Pineywoods;
You got that right cans consist of half aluminum and half paint and it takes a good fluxing to clean it up.
Punchings from aluminum sheet metal are a good source for aluminum. I found them to be very clean and free of oxides. Then again just about any source of aluminum is good if it's free.

BBM

[zopi]

lawn mower engines rock...just put the whole thing in the stack melter and torch it...the good bits will run out by themselves.

[Ironwood]

Is this Ron Reil that live in Idaho or something? I sent him some of my wrought iron to sample waayyyy back.

Also, we have a group here that does events called Hot Metal Happening, they did a "pour" micro brew fundraiser at a non profit I volunteer for. They use coke (I got the remnants of the pile for two years running). They cast iron medallions of our logo and event for us, Steel City Big Pour. Neat to see such a process in a "small scale", everyone was mezmorized. I love the sound. I have a set of cast iron work gloves here, they look like they are just a pair of old gloves left out in the rain but they are IRON, and HEAVY as @#$%. It is a good joke, but ya cant just toss them at someone (unless they are wearing steel toes ;))

Ironwood

[Ironwood]

I could also offer this,  I have a large sand ram that is air driven. It kinda looks like a small jack hammer. I had it rebuilt (I mistakenly thought I could use it as a light weight jack hammer). Could anyone here use it? PM me if you or someone you know could use it. My understanding is you use it to pack the sand and they to break the sand away, although I could be mistaken. I got it from a local foundry I cleaned out.

Ironwood

[zopi]

Ironwood..that is a neat story...I am not sure where Ron lives, and have not had any contact with him since like 2000....used to be a mailing list called TheForge...

I went to an ABANA (too many bureaucrats, not enough blacksmiths..) event and learned how to make steel flowers from Dorothy Steigler...One of my goals is to get a building up that I eother cannot burn down, or do not mind burning down and set up forge and foundry and get back to it...
I would love to clean out a foundry....(vulture, sick cow, etc...)

I personally cannot use an air rammer...I only have two flasks...but I will ask on the casting forum...maybe I will scare you up a suck....ah...buyer... lol
What do you want to ask for it?

[zopi]

Breaking down some loomnum in meltenstein there...powered by pine sawmill slabs...a wheelbarrow full of slabs will break down about fifty or sixty pound of aluminum....

[Ironwood]

Zopi,

The rebuild cost me $80, and add shipping and the FF amount to that. So, $90 + shipping. If it is worht more ask for more over there. I will split it with you. It is tall, like 3-4'  and has a travel of about 12-14". the rod is around 3/4-1".

Ironwood (Vulture)

[zopi]

K lemme see what I can do..