Hello.
My apologies for the late publication of the March ezine, it has been
one hell of a busy month and time has just simply got away... again.
For northern hemisphere dwellers you should be moving out of winter
into spring, while way down under here in OZ we are actually really
looking forward to a cold & wet... read a very wet winter to refill
diminished water storages. Most of Australia has endured one of the
worst droughts on record with some major water storages sitting at
below 3% capacity ...cripes if it gets any worse we wont have enough
moisture for the greensand mix in the foundry!...only joking, hopefully
it wont get that serious.... but things are crook though. We are soooo
over summer!
No matter where you live on this mighty globe, I hope you are getting
along OK with your foundry projects, I know that things can get tough
at times and you find it hard to advance at the rate at which you would
like, but it is only by doing lots of small things over a period of
time, that each small success builds on another and next thing you find
yourself where you want to be. Perseverance, determination, and a plan
of action will soon see you humming along at the pace that you want,
and achieving your goals.
No two people ever begin metal casting for the same reason, yes,
everyone wants to melt metal but the end product is rarely ever the
same, if you just love playing around and finding your feet so to speak
then that's OK, but sooner or later you will realize that it is
possible to undertake some pretty serious stuff in your home hobby
foundry, there's people making allsorts of stuff from small model
airplane parts to people who make parts for old oil engines, cars,
motorbikes, micro light aircraft, even complete engines as you have
read in a previous ezine.
The point I'm making is that once you learn the skills and know how to
produce quality metal castings you will amaze your self at what's
really possible in this game, you may even stumble onto a product that
you can make in quantities and sell in your spare time, all you need to
do is keep your mind open for possible product ideas, once you find
something, you do a little development & marketing work and next
thing it's on it's way. The Internet is the most amazing place in the
new millennium to market things; a great place to start selling your
creations is on ebay.
When I look back on some of the reason's why I began to explore what
could be achieved with metal casting techniques, I had a direct goal
and focus to make a specific item, all my attention, learning &
practice was directed into that one objective, I did not even think
about other things that could have been a distraction, it wasn't long
before things started to fall into place and nice castings began to
appear, call it luck if you want, but I think it was more to do with
persistence & determination.
For the past few weeks we've been tightly focused on a new web project,
this is a spin off from the vast storehouse of engineering skills and
techniques developed over a good part of my life and again, a specific
interest. You may have heard the name of Lotus Cars; the founder of the
company was Colin Chapman a brit and a brilliant design engineer. He
created some incredible high performance sports cars, not to mention
his brilliant F1 cars, which took the great Jim Clark and many others
to fame in the formula 1 arena.
One great fancy of mine is the classic lotus élan, as it has
happened we now manufacture several after market parts for these cars,
if you are interested in sports cars then feel free to take a look at
our new web site & share the passion. http://www.elantrikbits.com
Perhaps you have thinking about starting an online venture, all you
need to do is find or create a product, learn as much as you can about
setting up a web site, study & learn how to market your product.
Thousands of people all over the globe run small online businesses from
their own home, and there's no reason why you can't also sell online.
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Hobby
Metal Craft Skills; what exactly are they?
Have you ever watched a metal worker, say,
a Blacksmith at a country fair... most people watch in
awe as the Blacksmith carefully heats a piece of iron in a charcoal
forge before placing it on the anvil and then hammer it into all kinds
shapes, it all looks pretty simple doesn't it... and the
Blacksmith would
probably tell you that it really is not that difficult to hammer &
shape things from red hot metal simply because it is quite fluid
He's right you know, generally all it takes to work with metal is a
small amount of *knowledge & instruction*, and some solid
practice, and before too long even a novice will be producing good
quality metal craft items.
But there is a lot more to metal craft than just blacksmith work.
While you can't deny that blacksmithing is a lot of fun, and a skilful
worker can make many practical and also ornamental things. With a
little practice you could also produce beautiful iron work if you
wanted to simply by using basic skills & equipment. In the early
days the blacksmith was one of the most sought after "skilled" workers
in the village.
But you know, you can take the art of blacksmithing another step.
What if you created a small charcoal fired furnace using your existing
forge, it wouldn't take much work to build up a simple circle of bricks
on the forge hearth to form a deeper bed of charcoal so that you could
produce a deep bed of red-hot glowing coals which will produce a large
amount of heat.
Enough to heat and melt aluminium... maybe
even bronze.
Of course a crucible is required to place
the scrap or ingots in for melting purposes, the crucible needs to be
buried in the bed of coals so that the heat of the charcoal do its work
for you.
All you need to do now is to apply a gentle blast of air from the forge
bellows to create a gentle blast of air to build the heat, and crucible
containing the scrap aluminium or home made ingots will quickly melt
the metal in the crucible.
Most hobby workers use a small electric motor attached to a blower to
produce the correct amount of air blast, but for the moment the manual
operation of the forge bellows will suffice.
Good quality hardwood grade charcoal will produce a very high amount of
heat, in fact you'll notice while heating the crucible and ingots
that in no time at all the alloy will start to melt, and once the metal
starts to melt, the pool of metal in the bottom of the crucible rapidly
promotes the total melt.
Now once the metal has melted, it is ready to pour into a sand mould.
The idea is to prepare your sand moulds well before the metal has
melted, so that everything is set up and ready to go.
We have many people visit our web site www.myhomefoundry.com looking
for information about metal casting...lots of people around the
globe are involved in metal casting, it can become quite addictive
which is not surprising, when you realize all of the kind of things
that you can make with metal casting.
For the home engineer, inventor & project builder, hobby metal
casting could be just the thing, if you want to create your own special
castings at almost zero cost, i.e. once your mini foundry is
established.And if you take the time to carefully build your equipment
it should last you for many years.
To find out more about hobby metal casting and how you can employ
the methods & techniques to build & create your unique projects
visit our web site to download a free ebook to begin your understanding
of the intriguing metal craft.
Flame Colored Copper Process.
This
item is presented here courtesy of the Columbia Missourian newspaper.
It was reported by Sara Muri and appeared as "Copper tones - Mother and
son get fired up about copper work."
http://www.copper.org/copperhome/DIY/flame_colored_cu_process.html
These techniques can be so cool & creative, if you happen to have
the Decorative Metal Work
ebook, then this is another DIY method you can tuck away with the
book.
The Art Of Clear
Thinking.
Rudolph
Flesch, author of The Art Of Clear Thinking, commented on the tendency
we have towards ignoring the obvious. He said that, "In a sense we all know what to do about
our problems and how to make well reasoned decisions, but we don't."
We could improve our personal
finances by budgeting, but we don't budget; we could improve our
careers by studying, but we don't study; we could improve
our health by dieting, but we don't diet.
Information is piled high in
our lives' archives, but we don't use it.
Thinking is too hard... Food
for thought isnt it!
Depression
Refractory Mix For The Backyard Foundry.
OK, so you want to save
a bucks, dont want to spend too many dollars on commercial refractory
lining for your furnace, well you can do what the old timers used to do
during the depression... make their own, that's right, gather some raw
meterials, and lots of elbow grease, cause it takes a fair bit of work
to make the stuff.... so here we go.
This old time foundry
refractory mix for crucible or cupola furnaces was adopted by
financially strapped foundry owners during the great depression,
everyone suffered financial hardships during those days so there was much
improvisation going on, now the backyard founder can save money making
a home brew just like the old timers did. First of you need to make up
a mixture of grog, i.e. slag free old broken firebricks, break them up
into 50%-pea size & 50 % Walnut size (maybe 1/2wlanut size for home
made furnace)
Place the grog mix in a large
bucket or drum, and then fill the drum with water until the grog is
well covered; leave to soak until there is no sign of air bubbles.
Follow the next few steps carefully as the amounts are made up by
volume & not weight.
Take three volumes of the now
very wet 50/50-grog mix and add 2 volumes of good fire clay. (The
measuring volumes can be made up of anything from a small tin to a
large bucket, depending on the quantity you may need) Mix thoroughly
and temper it like moulding sand with a water glass mix of 50% water
glass & 50% water. Water glass is
the old name given for sodium
silicate.
The final grog and fireclay mix
should have about 6% moisture, it should easily form into a ball in
your hands, if it's crumbly, it is too dry, and you may need to add
more water. But watch carefully as you don't want to let it become like
mud. Finally put your mix under plastic and let it sweat & age for
about 72 hours or about three days. Now comes the fun part where you
can
start to install the mixture in your cupola or gas fired furnace.
With the inner metal
or wooden
former in place, the mix can now be placed around the furnace wall
cavity and gently rammed into place until the lining is complete.
Smooth it off on top and then leave to air dry for a day or so.
But before you start ramming
the
mixture, to help drainage and ventilation later on when you cure the
refractory, drill a series of ¼" holes through the outer
shell to help
vent moisture when drying out. After a couple of days, light a small
fire in the furnace to begin the slow drying process of the
refractory.
The drying stage is most
critical part of the whole process and it needs to be printed
bold. IF YOU DRY THE REFRACTORY OUT TOO FAST, IT WILL CRACK &
SPALL, and ruin all your good work
When no further
steam is issuing from the holes in the furnace shell, build a bigger
fire up to where the
melting bed or zone is (10" to 14" from the bottom of the cupola
Furnace, or for a gas fired crucible furnace about where the crucible
sits) Turn the blower on, this will increase the heat and vitrify or
glaze the rammed mix into a solid lining.
It is advisable to not
use Borax while glazing the lining, borax is a flux and will have
the effect of dissolving the lining, and you don't want that to happen.
This home brew refractory lining you've made and installed in your
furnace should never need replacing, except for the area around where
the melting zone takes place. In which you may have to replace a small
ring after every melt session is complete. In a gas fired
furnace it should last for many years.
Disclaimer: This recipe was handed to me by an old foundry worker in
good faith, I make no guarrantees that it will be successful).
The Benefits of Rural Living & DIY.
In recent times there has been a dramatic lifestyle shift of many
people, some make a Sea Change and choose to
live by the coast, others make a Tree Change, and embrace the rural
lifestyle, where the air is clean and fresh, and
the day to day living is much more relaxed than one could ever
experience in the city.
A rural location generally provides a low stress lifestyle, a rural
lifestyle means bidding farewell forever to the daily grind of the peak
hour commute. Internet technology provides ready access to the city
based office; it is now feasible to work in your rural based office and
be equally productive as if you were actually "In your city based
office". You'll now be able to claim your life back, and have more time
to spend with family & friends, to pursue new hobbies & interests, Or
spend the time tending to the daily chores around your rural lifestyle
property.
But rural life is not all beer and skittles.
What will you do when equipment & machines begin to break down on
your small farm? Will you have to call in the local expert to repair
& fix things every time you have a minor mechanical disaster?
Wouldn't you like to acquire the skills and know-how to be able to
rebuild or repair all manner of things on your small farm.
Living in a rural environment generally requires a plethora of special
skills such as: Fence building, to build new farm fences, and handling
yards to work with sheep or cattle, there's no doubt you will need
a special set of yards to hold animals while you work and care for
them. If you want to build small sheds, welding and fabricating skills will
serve you well. Carpentry skills will
also be a big help when it comes to building or renovating around the
farmhouse.
DIY is a growing trend right
across most western countries, driven by
the fact that it is becoming more difficult & expensive to
secure the services of a suitable tradesman, many people are resorting
to learning all kinds of practical skills, and surprising themselves at
just how good they are at accomplishing things with tools & new
skills that they
previously never dreamed possible, it is all part of the push to be
self-reliant,
and being able to maintain your small farm, without having to rely on
too much outside help.
One particular metal work hobby that is burgeoning across the globe is
hobby metal casting, this amazing ancient process is carried out using
the methods and techniques passed down from previous generations to
create cast metal objects and items from molten metal, mainly bronze
and aluminium, but the experienced worker can even melt and pour cast
iron in the home hobby foundry.
Once the skill & knowledge is acquired, the small rural farm
enterprise is an ideal place to fabricate the tools and the simple
equipment to begin the art of metal casting, many new cast items can be
readily made from scrap aluminium or bronze, such as; replacement parts
to repair old machinery, many people who have lathes, mills, etc, often
look to metal casting as a natural extension of their general metal
working skills.
The art of metal casting is not difficult to learn, and it is an
amazing process, this ancient process can be used to make high value
products from
readily available scrap metal.The creative person can even make art
castings. For the practical small farm operator searching for a new
challenge, or hobby to indulge those spare hours in, this hobby could
provide a new creative challenge and personal reward.
Welding
& Brazing Fluxes.
Ever wondered where to get special fluxes
for brazing and welding of all kinds of metals, try this link. http://www.piehtoolco.com/en-us/dept_626.html
But you will find a heck of a lot more than just brazing fluxes, it is
worth a look.
Home Made Hand Tools For Hobby Foundry Work.
If you have been thinking about making a
start in hobby foundry work in your home workshop, you may be forgiven
for thinking that the tools and equipment are going to cost you an arm
and a leg, this need not
be. Sure, you could visit the downtown industrial tools supplier and
take home an arm full of expensive tools.
But if you take a good look at some of the tools, you'll discover that
the design principles and fabrication could well be undertaken in the
home workshop if you have metal fabrication skills and a reasonable
amount of basic metal working equipment.
Take for instance "crucible lifting tongs", once you understand how
these tools operate; you could quite easily make a set or two over a
weekend. The basic design action operates on the "scissor principle"
but they don't cut anything, they are designed to "clamp securely" onto
the crucible to lift it out of the furnace when the metal has
melted.Great caution needs to be taken while carrying out this
operation, as one slip due to faulty or badly designed tongs, and you
could have a real disaster on your hands.
The best way to design and build a set of tongs is to copy a well made
set, or to follow directions set out in a textbook or ebook downloaded
from the net, we'll give you some links a little further on in this
article.
Following are some of the most frequently used basic tools you'll need
in the hobby foundry; Bench ramming moulders tool - Tube sprue cutter -
turned wood sprues - slick & oval spoon - hand riddle or sand sieve
- draw pins, screws & hooks - rapping bar and spike - gate cutter -
strike off bar. Sand carving tools (made from old hacksaw blades)
The tools mentioned above seem to be the ones that will be most used in
your hobby foundry... and all of them can be home made if you have metal & wood
working skills, it will take time and effort to make the tools required
but they wont cost you a red cent if you make them from scrap
materials, and if you are like most hobbyists you will know where to
"scrounge stuff".
You may have to experiment with different ideas before you arrive at
the most satisfactory design, but you will learn a great deal about why
things have to be made certain ways.
Do you own a wood lathe? Even a most basic machine will suffice in the
home workshop, you could even make your own wood lathe if you were keen
enough, I guarrantee there are tens of thousands of home made wood
lathes sitting in hobby workshops the world over. A wood lathe will
repay itself many times over when you start to make patterns for your
hobby foundry.
Your bench-ramming tool can be quickly turned to shape on the wood
lathe, in fact, while you're at it, make two or three of them in
different shapes & sizes, they will all come in handy when ramming
and moulding patterns of differing sizes, you could get away with a
single tool, but you wont regret making extra sand ramming tools.
Draw pins and spikes are used to remove timber patterns from sand
moulds after the pattern has been rammed. The pattern will need to be
carefully removed without disturbing any of the surrounding sand.
Draw pins can easily be fabricated from long slender wood screws, and
particleboard screws are ideal.
The easiest way to convert woodscrews into draw pins is to braze weld a
short length of 1/4" dia mild steel rod onto the head of the
screw...that is all you need to do... make a set of them with different
gauge screws as well long and short ones and you should have the field
covered as far as lifting pins or draw spikes go... simple isn't it.
Worn or blunt hacksaw blades are usually thrown in the bin, from now on
you should save them, as many useful little hobby foundry tools can be
made from old blades, quite often-small sand carving tools can easily
be made by grinding and shaping with a normal bench grinder.
It is not hard to be resourceful and think how you can utilize scrap
materials, you should see now that there is absolutely no need to spend
large amounts of money to get the tools and things you need for your
hobby. The more fabrication skills you have the better you will be
equipped to build all manner of tools and equipment.
Till Next Month, be careful, but have fun with your projects.
Col
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