Foundry Project Page 10

I have now decided to have a removable blower tube. Why have the extra thing sticking out of my furnace? It was just adding more weight last time anyway. I understand from my research, that as long as you have air flowing in, the blower pipe should not get hot. If it does, I will improvise another solution.

For now I have duct taped the blower that I made, to my new PVC pipe. It is a good fit.

I didn't take Dave Gingery's advice and build the inner mold out of 2 round boards and sheet metal. Instead, I saw these at Home Depot and decided to give them a try. I think they will work quite well. They come in all different sizes so you can get one to match nearly any size furnace you desire.

The boards are from Gingery's book. I will use them to maintain the spacing and they will be drawn out as I am filling and ramming my furnace with my refractory mix.

Here is a picture of my refractory mix, outside in the garage ...all ready for tomorrow. I read that you can keep the stuff for a long duration, as long as it is a sealed container so it can not dry out. Good to have around for mending cracks and patching things when needed.

I hope that I have zero patching tomorrow, but if I do, I should have enough left over from my mix, to handle any problems.

Here are my new ingot trays. Again, they were from Quality Metal Works. I did quite a bit of computer work for them, and we have worked out a deal to swap services. It makes this hobby a lot easier for me.

Notice the bucket of black stuff in the background? That is 1 of 2 buckets I have, filled with black casting sand. I have not yet built my casting bench (table), so I will be pouring into the ingot trays tomorrow. I do have some styrofoam from the local builder here, so I may try a bit of that to see how it goes. I will try some simple pours tomorrow, just to see how clean they come out.

I know nothing about the lost styrofoam process ...well very little. I hope that experience of trying different things, will show me what I need to know. It is a very cool idea and I'm dying to give it a go.

Here is some of the scrap aluminum that I have. Also, you can now see the 2 buckets of black sand that I have for my castings.