Cheap and Free Rick is the president of the Metro Detroit Metalworking Club.
A few weeks ago we spent the better part of a Sunday over at C&F Ricks house while some aluminum casting was being performed. Rick was making a few practice pours for a demo he was going to do in Ann Arbor. There was also a brass pour made to practice for a cannon pour that may happen this summer.
Watching all this go on its hard to do nothing so I grabbed a hot glue gun, some foam, and Dons hot wire cutter and cut out a fictional engine block. With Ricks guidance the foam was coated in popcorn ceiling/stucco material with the foam balls sifted out. After the coating, the foam was sprinkled in common beach sand and dried with a heat gun to speed things up. The foam was then buried in a bucket of sand and molten aluminum was poured onto the foam and the block was cast. Seeing the results I knew that I would need to build a furnace of my own.
Right away I started to gather materials. By the end of the week I had gathered or made all of the things in this photo. The metal 5 gallon bucket, the sheet metal for the lid, my burner tube, the crucible, 2 stainless steel pressure heads, and 3 ingot molds
A few weeks ago we spent the better part of a Sunday over at C&F Ricks house while some aluminum casting was being performed. Rick was making a few practice pours for a demo he was going to do in Ann Arbor. There was also a brass pour made to practice for a cannon pour that may happen this summer.
Watching all this go on its hard to do nothing so I grabbed a hot glue gun, some foam, and Dons hot wire cutter and cut out a fictional engine block. With Ricks guidance the foam was coated in popcorn ceiling/stucco material with the foam balls sifted out. After the coating, the foam was sprinkled in common beach sand and dried with a heat gun to speed things up. The foam was then buried in a bucket of sand and molten aluminum was poured onto the foam and the block was cast. Seeing the results I knew that I would need to build a furnace of my own.
Right away I started to gather materials. By the end of the week I had gathered or made all of the things in this photo. The metal 5 gallon bucket, the sheet metal for the lid, my burner tube, the crucible, 2 stainless steel pressure heads, and 3 ingot molds