G'day there.

But apart from the great travel experience of the West, the casting party organised at John & Celia Harmes property at Tambellup (A small WA town) was a great success. More on that later.

So yes, for the entire Month of May we were on the move in WA either site seeing, working on the casting party stuff, or just sitting around socialising.... and that's what a holiday is all about isn’t it, so sorry if you were looking forward to the May ezine, but this months will more than make up for that I'm sure. 

On a more irritating note, there has been a major stuff up at our web site over the past couple of weeks, a major glitch occurred (While we were away) with the responder web forms which are operated from a third party server platform... too technical to explain it here, but it has hampered our customer communication and support in more ways than you can imagine, work is underway to rectify the problem and we just have to sit tight until everything is back in order again... watch this space as they say!! (A few days later everything was back in order again). 

 
Do you have an inner most desire to create & make things from molten metal? Maybe you have a dozen or more ideas floating around in your head that you would like to do, but you don't know where to start?

Perhaps you've been sitting on the sidelines admiring what other people have been making, if that is the case then it is probably your turn to finally get the wheels turning... kick start that casting hobby into gear. 
 
      

Well, you wont have to wait any longer, because we have a great offer for you right now, you see we love to see people creating things, and as many of our ebook clients have discovered, once you learn the basics, & you begin to experience some small successes, it is not long before you are on your way to fulfil your metal casting dream.
 

The Aussie Metal Casting Party Group-Tambellup Western Australia.

Group Photo: Left to Right.
Glen Oliver, Danny Hewitt, Brett Green, Geoff Williams, Michael Parker (Front), Chester Smith (Behind), John Campbell, John Harmes (Host), Col Croucher (Presenter), Ron Denny, Mick Trezona. Attendees were from local areas as well as other parts of Western Australia. Unfortunately for Jeff Smith of Perth, due to circumstances beyond his control, sent an apology and was unable to attend. (At least you can see now what happened over the weekend Jeff).

Thank you to our Western Australian friends & clients for the warm welcome and friendly time I had with you, who knows, we may get together again in the future. A special thank you to Duncun Chadbourne for the photographic recording of the weekend, and also for the superb sand ramming tool he turned up from Western Australian Jarrah timber for me overnight , thanks Dunc. A big thnak you also to John for hosting the casting party at his workshop, John has a collection of old engines he restores for himself and for others.

Now what about a casting party in NSW or QLD sometime in the future?

Many of you know that the casting party was organised several months in advance. In the beginning it was just a thought but then, the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.

It became more of a possibility when I emailed John Harmes to run the idea past him. The biggest hurdle was to find someone with a workshop and fully operational small foundry, luckily John was an old hand at this as he had purchased the hobby foundry ebooks and had everything we needed to run the workshop.... an agreement was reached for John to act as a host for the casting party.

So then I had to trawl through our database to find our Western Australian ebook clients, this did not take too long... invites in the form of emails were sent out well in advance, soon the replies started to arrive at my inbox, I did not for a moment expect all of our WA clients to come along. Western Australia is huge state and the travel constraints alone are a big obstacle when you are just looking at a weekend workshop.

When it was all boiled down we had a total of ten attendee’s from various WA regions as well as some local interested people, which our host John had invited to come along.

A special thank you to John’s wife Celia and Duncan Chadbourn’s wife Rita for keeping the lads happy with morning & afternoon tea and lunch, something you can’t beat is good old country catering & hospitality. Thank you very much ladies.

In the lead up to the weekend party John told me he was working on a little secret, I did not ask what the secret was, nor did he give me any clues, all I knew was that it had something to do with metal casting.

But he did keep asking me how many people were coming along, the penny suddenly dropped during the lunch break what the secret was, he started to hand out envelopes to everyone, which contained an object with a decent amount of weight in it, you could imagine the surprise when the envelopes were opened to find a beautifully made cast aluminium paperweight with the initial "CP" for "casting party" standing proud on top, along with a computer generated stick on tag (Courtesy of Duncan) which was embossed with the date of the casting party.

A very nice casting specimen showing what can be done with lost foam casting, thanks John for your thoughtfulness and nice casting work. This was a great surprise and a heck of a nice gesture for john to do this, so thank you John for your lost foam cast aluminium paperweight gift, very much appreciated.

Another pleasant surprise was the beautiful hand ramming tool that Duncan turned up for me over night, Duncan must have noticed the old battered hand ramming tool that I was using, I have probably been had been using the tool for a couple of decades so it really was showing a bit of wear and tear.... (I would love a dollar for every time it has rammed the green sand).

Saturday morning, kicked off at 9.00AM with a meet & greet over coffee and biscuits, and much chatter about all sorts of things, as usual with these kind of gathering, the time passes far too quick and before you know, it is all over, but in the mean time quite a bit of learning was done, it is fair to say that everyone went away with more knowledge and info than when they arrived, and a couple of Johns friends have decided to give the metal casting hobby ago in the near future.

                            Johns shed of Treasures.                             EPS foam patterns ready to cast.

           

           Pouring metal into a set of three foam patterns.           One more to go, lots of fumes & flame.

           

                     The Secret Casting Project.                       The "Secret" End Result: Completed Paper Weight.

After John had finished with his foam casting demonstration and te resulting castings were handede around for inspection & discussion in the form of questions and answers itwas time for the morning tea break & a well earned cuppa, and a chance to talk and get to know some of the blokes who had come along to see what a casting party was all about.

John told us about a little joke he had with the local pastry & bakery shop owner, she wandered why John was ordering so many sausage rolls, sangers etc, he told her the food was for a casting party.... us foundry folks  know what we mean by a "casting party", but this lady thought John was about to do some filming - video work, and was looking for some models for the casting party!.. Needless to say, he had to explain to her what it was all about! I'm not sure that she still fully understands what was happening at Johns place.

After morning tea break it was time to get my limited foundry gear together. Perhaps I should explain,  as said earlier, my wfie & I  travelled by car to Western Australia, and as you can imagine once the luggage and everything  needed for the holiday was packed into the car there was very little room left for foundry stuff.

So all I could take was 11KG of prepared green sand sealed in a double strength plastic bag, two small steel flasks or mould (mold) boxes, and the normal tools one needs for green sand work, a pair of long arm leather gloves for radiant heat protection while pouring, John supplied the furnace (A copy of the one explained in our ebooks), and the various crucible tongs, pouring shanks, etc etc. So overall, we had everything we required.
I also took along some small patterns to use for the greensand demonstration.

        
           No, It's not Tim the Demtel man, It's Col.               Green sand molding step 1: Ram the drag.

        
           Small patterns Embedded Into Green Sand.     Patterns embedded with hammer & wood Punch.
 This method is a "back to front" molding method but quite usefull for reproducing small parts as shown here.

        
           Placement of sprue & small risers or whistlers.                  Ramming the cope down firm.
Small molds or flasks are indispensible when doing small work of this nature. It does not really matter whether you are working with large or small flasks, many of the methods & techinques are the same.

        
         Using the venting tool before removing the sprue.          The finished drag mold and ingates.

Geoff Williams from Perth, is a radio controlled model car enthusiast, he brought along a pair of resin patterns, these patterns were replica's of the suspension arms of one of his radio controlled race cars, instead of paying for replacement items he decided to bring them along to see if we could reproduce them, which we were able to do despite the fact they were an unusual shape in the that they did not have a defined parting line.

We decided to go the same moulding process as shown in the photos above, yes it is fiddly work to carve out around the patterns after they have been pressed or embedded into the rammed green sand, but once that is done, the gates and runners are cut the sand moulds is ready to pour.

       
      
        Small suspension arms for radio controlled car       The furnace in action during a melt

      
     Pouring the molten aluminium into green sand mold.   The results of the pour, two raw castings.

These small parts could also be repoduced using the investment casting or lost wax method, exact replica repro parts which require very little finishing required, the other method that can be used is te shell moulding technique which is hot on the heels of investment casting for providing exact replica castings with most types of metals.


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Inbox Email Snippets.
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Dear Colin,
I downloaded your monster package late last night and could hardly stop reading, I Knew you are a good man, and would make sure I got my e-books, and am sure we will do more business in the near future.
Thanks again!
Emery.
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Hi Colin.
You write an interesting letter, unfortunately my hobbies are more or less behind me. Since retirement several years ago I have been refurbishing old Motorcycles, just for something to do.

The thought of building a furnace was mainly to produce unavailable parts. Save turning them out of the solid. As you say, like many others I have had many hobbies during my lifetime, and developed many skills, I even managed two trips to Australia, wonderful country, we spent six months there.

Thank you for all the helpful information that you have sent.  You do keep yourself busy, how I envy your energy, I can vaguely remember those days.
Sincerely.
Dan Woods.
USA.

Well folks, thats about it for now, I hope you have enjoyed this months ezine. Thanks to all the Aussie fellows who came along to Tambellup WA, as with all of these fun casting weekends, the time passes by far too quickly, and it seems to be that not long after it all begins, you are packing up to leave, I'm quite sure that many people went away with a clearer picture in their minds about the foundry process. Let's hope we will see more aussie foundry projects in the not to distant future.

Keep The Good Work.
Col.