Our lovely new furnace cracks almost immediately. In retrospect firing it with wood and full air injection while it was still damp from days of rain may not have been the wisest idea.
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Our first furnace disintegrated, it's time to upgrade... The plan for this session was to create some useable aluminium stock for machining, and then if possible to try to melt and cast copper. Check out the amusing videos of this session in the video gallery |
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We've upgraded from two cheap flowerpots to a section of large concrete tube. |
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We've also upgraded our compressor to a centrifugal fan. This gives a much larger air throughput. The cardboard tube is heavy-duty and has a 90degree bend to force the air upwards into the furnace. |
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Our lovely new furnace cracks almost immediately. In retrospect firing it with wood and full air injection while it was still damp from days of rain may not have been the wisest idea. |
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We performed a hasty Heath Robinson repair with some welding wire, and carried on... |
| We managed to get two good pours, which you can see in the video gallery. For moulds we used steel beer cans with the tops removed. One can also had the base removed and was slit down the side. We used welding to compress it and hold it at a smaller diameter for thinner stock. When preparing for the third pour we noticed that something had gone very awry... | |
| In fact the steel crucible melted. No more casting for us today, although this indicates that we should be able to melt copper! | |
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We managed to get two useful pieces of stock, the smaller of which became a donor part to my Quiet Beretta project. | |
| We also recovered a large piece of slag from within the furnace. | |
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The large piece of stock from the steel beer can mould was taken to lathe. The end was faced and the edge turned to reveal a nice pattern of flaws in the top layer. |
email : homecasting@brettlawrence.cc