Hi all,
Well, what an eventful few days since my last posting about trying to find suppliers of materials to make a foundry. I discovered that pottery suppliers usually stock most of the materials I needed, but I couldn’t find a supplier in Cornwall. A web search turned up many potters, but only 1 supplier who had shut down a few years ago. I sent an email to one of the potters asking where he got his materials from and the reply was the supplier who had shut down. He hadn’t shut down, just moved 500 yards round the corner. I went to see him and got both the sodium silicate and some silica sand, but no refractory blocks. When I returned home I sent an email to the potter thanking him and continued my search along a different tack, I would search for people casting metal hereabouts and ask them who supplied them. I left an email with a local business that is an engineering company that also casts metal, JW Engineering of Camborne, Cornwall. Five minutes later they phoned me inviting me to a pour today 10th Nov. I went along and watched as John was timing the melt of 25kg of cast iron in his home made foundry. Before long John and his wife Angela helped by their son used a small crane to lift the crucible out of the foundry and poured the iron into two moulds. A second smaller melt filled the third mould. If that wasn’t enough the potter has sent me an email stating that he probably has some spare refractory blocks I could have. I am arranging a suitable time to meet up. If all goes to plan I could have a foundry up and melting by next weekend, but I have family visiting so that could slow me down a bit. Meanwhile I will experiment with the sodium silicate and silica sand to see what sort of mould I can produce. Because of the shape of the cylinder block I think I will have make the mould in six parts, four sides and top and bottom. The sides will have to be semi self-supporting, green sand won’t do that. That is why I need try different strengths of sodium and silica to find a mix that will hold its shape with very little framework.
Lee