The International Hobby Metal Casting ezine.
Brought To You By:
Col Croucher, administrator of: www.myhomefoundry.com
Australia.
May 2011 - Number: 89
Hi There.
We are in for a very
cold
winter here in Australia, it is not quite the end of Autumn and winter
has suddenly arrived in the southern region of OZ. very cold and
showery on the lowlands, and a good dumping of early snow on the Alps,
the ski bunnies are ecstatic, the 13th of June is the official Queens
birthday holiday weekend and that also heralds the beginning of the
winter
ski season in OZ.
But I am happy to say, I wont be there to celebrate, I love the
mountain high country in the summer, but not a big fan of the snow...
yes, it's pretty... and it's cold... I'd rather be in the workshop
doing some foundry work & feeling the radiant heat from Fat boy,
the gas fired furnace.
There has been a huge amount of activity on the foundry scene of late,
people still continue to pop of from countries we have never heard of
to try their hand at hobby foundry, fantastic I say, they are helping
to keep the craft alive, just like you and I.
Have you made the patterns and cast your set of custom-made sports
driving pedals yet? You can read a bit more below, but this new
ebook
started a mild stampede at the web site, but the server didn't crash.
We have had a most interesting email request for help in the past few
weeks. The request for help came from a trade teacher at Coffee County
High
in Tennessee USA.
After reading Jeff’s email and thinking about his request, we decided
to donate a complete set of our hobby foundry ebooks to the Coffee
county high so that Jeff could continue teaching the age old craft of
metal casting to his young students.... read more below.
Get The A to Z Instructions.
Begin Your Casting Journey Here.
Coffee County High.
100 Red Raider Drive.
Manchester Tennessee. USA.
School project: The first of 17
book shelves that the students are making for English the classes.
Students Learning Lathe turning Skills.
Model car & truck woodwork project
About three weeks ago an email arrived at my
inbox, it tugged at my old trade school strings to lend a helping hand
to someone who was reaching out for support... we get the occasional
email like this, but this one was different.
The Message:
I am a teacher at Coffee County High school in Manchester Tennessee. I
Teach Manufacturing, Machining, Engineering and Manufacturing
Applications. I already know how much fun it is to make castings and
metal work projects and think my students would love to do that work
also.
I would like to know what the cost of all of the books package deal is,
as they all pertain to the subjects I teach. I think this would really
open up the creativity avenues for a lot of my students. What can you
do for me in a package deal for all of the cd\'s.
Thanks.
Jeff Hinshaw
Cte manufacturing cluster instructor.
Coffee County High School.
Manchester, Tennessee. USA.
===
My Reply:
Dear Jeff.
What a surprise it was to receive your email this morning, I usually
check my emails first thing in the morning, when I first read it, I had
to read it again to take it all in.
The paragraph in your email that read:
"I think this would really open up the creativity avenues for a
lot of my students”. Is the absolute sole reason why I set out many
years ago on a hobby foundry adventure, I could see a whole generation,
or maybe two generations missing out on learning about the basics of
creating things from metal.
This sad decline began many years ago in Australia when the powers that
be decided that Technical Schools were no longer required, I am a
product of the Tech School learning that was taught in the fifties and
sixties... that's where many of our highly talented trades and skilled
mechanical engineers came from... but the governments in all their
wisdom dismantled that... only to realise three or four decades later
that it was a grave mistake, but you cant just re-establish the system
in the blink of an eye, it will take another few decades to correct the
problem of teaching basic metal trades skills.
As a young boy who was born and raised on a family farm, I used to love
tinkering around in the old farm blacksmith shop, it was a great way to
fill in a cold wet winters day, heating and hammering old scrap iron
into all sorts of odd shapes.... that early forge experience whet my
appetite for metal casting later on in life.
So yes, I can fully understand where you are coming from, I commend
you, and congratulate
you on your quest to teach your students about the wonderful world of
working with metal in
all of its artistic shapes and forms, I'm sure that you will excite
their minds and get them to
think about many ways to be creative.
There are several other educational institutes in the USA who have
purchased our ebooks
to use in an educational sense, just as you intend to use them, but it
was only after looking
at the sales invoice that I have realised that they were educational.
After reading your email I have been mulling it over as to what &
how I could do to help you.
Our Donation To Coffee County
High.
I have decided to donate the entire set of ebooks to Coffee County High
School for exclusive use of your students, but there are a couple of
things that I would like you to do for me.
Since I began my online journey (late 2003), the bulk of my customers
have been from the USA, your country has been good to me; I view this
donation to Coffee County High School as a small way to give something
back... especially to your students. Just our small way of saying thank
you USA.
If you accept this offer I will prepare a CD ROM for you and mail it,
all you have to do is to provide your shipping address.
Kind Regards.
Col Croucher.
=====
Colin.
I was very happy to hear of your gratitude. I wanted to bring my
melting furnace to school and let the kids see the actual casting
process. It has just been so hectic trying to get my feet on the ground
and understand how to get the teaching done as well as keep up with all
required paperwork and other time wasters done. I have a machining
class that has not gotten much experience because I only have 1 mill
and 1 lathe that work. I have 5 other mills that do not have power to
them and cannot get the maintenance department to get them hooked up. I
am told they have been this way for the previous 2 years. I also have
another lathe that the previous teacher was going to scrap and started
dismantling. I want to try and resurrect it from the dead if time
permits.
I am a first year teacher at 49 years old and am just now getting
comfortable with the job.
I decided to take the teaching job so I could work with my children in
their sports and be with them in the summers. It did cut my pay by 25k
from the engineering job I left but I am working fewer hours and no
weekends, which means more to me. I am lucky my wife works a good job
with good pay.
My degree is in Industrial technology and I am having to take some
teaching classes along with the daily grind and my coaching my sons
baseball and basketball teams has not allowed me to do all of the
exciting things that I want to show the kids. My classes are mainly
metalworking and I mainly have wood working tools in the shop. I am
sorry for my digression but it is just another obstacle to overcome.
Jeff Hinshaw
Cte manufacturing cluster instructor.
Coffee County High School.
Manchester, Tennessee USA.
http://chs.coffeecountyschools.com/
====
Note:
We think that Jeff is to be commended for his drive and ambition to
teach his students the basic skills & understanding of all kinds of
metal craft, especially foundry work, it would be a shame for these
skills to become a lost art form. Congratulations Jeff, we all wish you
the best with your teaching endeavours, we trust that will glean a ton
of info from the ebooks... enjoy.
Col.
Learning The Basics Of Hobby Foundry.
Every now and again an email will arrive at our inbox with a request to spell out the art of hobby foundry in simple terms.
I wonder at times just how basic that foundry can be; after all we only use very simple methods and techniques to produce reasonable quality castings in the home foundry. So I thought just once, I will try to break it down into stages.
The first and most important thing about this hobby is that you have to want to get involved. You might have to sit down with a pen & paper and go through your particular skill sets that you have so far acquired in your life journey.
Where you are right now might be the result of something you learned five, ten, or fifteen years ago... many of the things that we learn during life are stored in the memory bank, but as you know, skills can go rusty, but they can be brought to life again with some quick revision & practice.
I know that my personal metal craft journey more or less began when I was a young teenager, but about three decades later, I suddenly had the yearning to conquer the art of hobby foundry work, so I literally threw myself off the deep end of the pool into the foundry world, I had to tread water for a while, but I was keen and passionate, and before long the bits and pieces of the metal art that I had collected over time suddenly began to make sense... the penny dropped as they say... and I was away.
But you may not find it totally straightforward until you have had a few trial sessions, most people have to have a reasonable play or learning period... that is when you begin to understand about the moulding mediums, mould making, pattern making, and how materials behave.
If You Can Answer Yes To The Following Questions.
You should not have any problems with hobby foundry work.
Can you weld?
Do you have basic wood working skills?
Do you like working & fabricating with metal?
Can you figure things out for your self?
Do you have access to night classes at a nearby college?
If for some reason you don’t have a complete set of metal - wood and workshop craft skills...then what about your friends, what skills do they have?
Would they/could they help you with your projects if you asked them to?
Many of the above-mentioned skills will be employed when you venture into the hobby foundry world. But there's no need to be afraid if you don't have a certain skill... because there is always someone you will know who might be able to help you out... do a trade, swap skills.. it sure beats paying for everything.
Pattern Making can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. But for starters, you should keep it simple, start with a flat pattern made from 3mm or 5m thick craft wood, cut out a simplistic shape like a dog or a cat, make sure all edges have a 3 to 5Deg angle draft to allow easy extraction from the green sand if that is what you are using, create some texturing and things on the pattern, design some simple ingates and runners to feed the metal, we use this system to make "C" spanners for a product we produce and sell, flat patterns can teach you the basics of pattern making before you move onto more complex shapes.
Or, why not experiment with styrene foam shapes which can be cast in ordinary dry sand, the lost foam type of casting is quick to do, and the results can be quite amazing, undercuts and intricate shapes are not a problem with lost foam.
Fuel For Furnace Heating: The most basic of course is charcoal, this is a great fuel, it is easy to make, and puts out a huge amount oh heat, but it's dirty, slow to build heat, and you'll use more than you think, we've touched on this before...a very simple furnace is all you need.
Waste Oil. Many hobby foundry workers swear by oil, if the burner design is good, and the fuel oil is filtered to keep the rubbish out that might block the nozzle, and you dont mind a bit of time involved to get te furnace running then oil is the cheapest option.
Gas LPG - Natural Gas: An furnace excellent fuel, quick to light and quick build of heat in the furnace, clean, but is getting expensive now. Can be used with air blower set up on furnace, or with naturally aspirated furnace.
Electricity: Not cheap anywmore, electric furnaces are very quiete in operation, several people use them, they are worth considering... maybe a solar powered electric furnace is the go for the future?
When learning and mastering a new hobby or craft, you can't expect to buy some books one week, and be creating good casting work the next, it just doesn't happen that way, the pathway to success is through gradual learning and understanding of everything you can learn about the subject.
About three decades back I undertook a lengthy foundry course, during the last course session, the instructor arranged a tour through a major automotive grey iron foundry, and what an experience & revelation that was, to think that of all of the things we had learned during the foundry course (on a very small scale) was truly magnified to a huge scale at this foundry... a massive tilting crucible holding several tons of molten grey iron, thevery large green sand and silicate sand mould trucks were brought into the foundry on a clever rail system, the required amount of iron was poured, and the trucks were then moved along for the next pour, one man controlled the whole operation from his computerised control centre high above.
The tour through the pattern shops was also a great learning experience, we took it all in... the moulding operations, the molten metal pour, the shake out area, and then into the dirty fettling area where the manual cleaning operations of grinding and cutting off the dags and flashings of metal were being removed from engine blocks - crankshafts - camshafts, and other bits and pieces, I will never forget that foundry tour, a real education.
And it also makes you think.
Take away the automation - the computer controlled system - the huge size of everything in that foundry - simplify it - and reduce it down to the hobby level and you have what most people are doing in their own backyard foundry... it is still sand moulds - you are using heat provided by gas - oil - or electricity to melt the metal - and home made foundry tools & accessories to mould, pour, and then recondition the sand. Even a well-run hobby foundry can be properly organised and have a little bit of manual automation about it.
Foundry metal craft is fun and creative, and it gives a buzz that few other crafts can give, and whats more, you can make real products, useful products, things that you can finish and machine, and use in all kinds of different applications... and when you get really good at it, don't be afraid to put your hand up to do the odd paying job... it will help to keep your hobby alive, but you wont have to advertise for the work, it will probably find you, word has a habit of getting around on the bush telegraph that you or someone else is pretty good at making stuff from molten metal... and that's pretty much how things go... this hobby fly's under the radar mostly.
So don't sit there on the fence wondering what you have to do next, get reading, learning, doing, practicing, perfecting, finding what works best for you... just do it!
Col.
Send us an email to get the ball rolling.