Foundry Project Page 9

It works great! The single battery gets it very hot and I will be curious to see if I even need 2 batteries to smelt the metal. hmmm I wonder what 2 would do?

Here is another shot of the blower in action with the lid off. I only have a small amount of charcoal in the furnace right now. Nothing too serious yet.

I decided to hook 2 batteries up in series and WOW! It was almost as powerful as the old Electrolux! I am set now man! I just have to take this baby out to test it. Damn that plastic is getting hot! -Hey honey come look at this darn thing go!

Oh my goodness babe... That's great! She is entirely impressed by my creative use of the hair dryer.

A few moments go by and suddenly POOOOOMPH!

What the! -Damn I must have had an air bubble in the cement. -Thank god I had put the lid back before testing the dual batteries! Oh well, I figured it would not last. I thought that I might get at least 1 or 2 melts out of it before it was junk, but perhaps it is better this way. I would not want to have something bad happen when I had hot metal in there.

I was planning on taking out to fire it up to maximum and let the plastic melt off the outside. Then when I was sure that it was safe (after several strong firings), I would smelt some metal in it.

This blow-out was probably the first of many that would have come, had I driven the heat up much more. I am going to junk this one and get a proper furnace built now.

My Dave Gingery books finally came from Lindsay Publications so I now know how to make it properly. This was a fun learning experience and it taught me a lot! Making my next one will be a lot easier now that I know the ropes.

Well tonight (9/10/2002) I was busy again. I finally got the fire clay, thanks to my wife going out for me yesterday. I also had to get a new bag of sand, as the 2 previous ones were ruined. I mixed them with bentonite to make a refractory mix, but found out that bentonite makes a terrible refractory mix. It crumbles like cookies after it is cured :(

So 2 parts sand 1 part fire clay is the formula that I'm using now. I mixed it all up tonight according to Dave Gingery's book. I used just enough water to make it a bit more moist than molding sand. I covered it with plastic so it won't dry out and I will leave it set overnight (as he recommends). I think that is to allow the clay to absorb the water properly.

Here in this picture, you can see that I also now have a new metal lid. I had this made down at Quality Metal Works again (where I had my crucible made). It should be much nicer than the old plastic one that I had. By the way, the plastic furnace is down by the curb for the trash tonight :) -It was a good learning experience and fun! But now I'm ready to get busy and start some real casting.

I may run this lid up to the shop tomorrow and have them weld the wires inside, to the metal rim. Then I can grind off the wires sticking out. They look pretty dangerous!

Here is the bucket that I'm going to use. It is a metal pretzel can. I have cut the hole for the tuyere (blower hole) in the can already. I tried the dremel at first but it was horrible, then I got the old faithful jig saw out with a small and very fine metal blade. It did a fairly decent job :) A bit of filing and I'm set.