/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Here is what the ingots look like.

pretty cool op, what are you planning to cast?

have you looked at any of dave gingery's books/etc on home casting and machine tool making?

try to melt it with fresnel lens from the overhead projectors. you wont have to buy fuel

>>243932
No, I've not checked those out. Most of my sources are from online. Thanks, I'll note those for further reading. I found this website only today, http://www.flamingfurnace.com/ which has some cool inspiration projects.

I plan on reproducing some old antique tools. I have a friend that runs a big antique store and has lots of old aluminum stuff that you can't find anymore. I figure I'd cast up a bunch of it and get them working.

>>243933
I have a massive Fresnel lens from a rear projection TV that I've used to melt small amounts of zinc with. I'll vaporize a penny and melt a stack down to only the zinc. It isn't powerful enough for doing stuff on this larger scale and not close to being big enough for the size I want to be able to cast.

It is far more useful in cooking food. Here's a few pics of the first time I fried sausage patties with it (repost).

>you wont have to buy fuel

When I have a waste fuel oil furnace I'll be able to use used motor oil and used cooking oil as fuel. That stuff I can get from friends, local stores, and businesses for free.

http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/

Here's a great source for several types of furnaces and methods. It even has a big list of his failures which birthed his successes.

>pic is my current setup.

I actually took the hair dryer motor out of the hair dryer and removed the heating coil. I then have it hooked up to a 15v (actually 20v when tested) AC/DC adapter to compensate for the loss of the heating coil.

>>243936
i see. also i recognize that image . i think you posted it in one of those post your work threads. very interesting info ITT

What gets me with sandcasting is how extremely easy it really is. All you need is a blank of whatever you want to cast, press it into the sand, remove it, start casting. There's a few more steps and better technical terms, but damn, it really is easy.

I have a load of clay I want to mold some figurines and sculptures out of so I can cast metal versions. If you have a good waste fuel furnace then you can cast stronger metals like iron. The only real downside is that casted metal isn't as strong as forged metals. But, you can cast some iron ingots and forge whatever your skills can muster out of it and make it stronger.

>>243937
why did you remove the coil ?

>>243941
Because it is not needed. When you press the "cool" button, the coil is still producing heat, but only at a very reduced rate. Hot air is expanded and has less oxygen so it has the potential to not fuel the fire as much as cool air or ambient temperature air. I wanted to make sure no extra heat was being put into the air. I also shade the black plastic to prevent solar heat from doing the same thing.

>>243943
i see

As a tip, I made a small tube out of hardware cloth then flattened and cupped one end. I used this to skim the slag off the top of the molten aluminum prior to pouring. It worked very well. Here's a pic of it, it is the wire cage looking thing at the bottom of the pic.

>Forging the Hammer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQnzlK9YsL8

Here's a neat video of forging a hammer with some tool steel.

I have a few railroad spikes I've been wanting to try to forge into hammers. Does anyone know how well railroad spike metal hold up being used as a hammer? I'll be doing it anyway just to gain knowledge, but some foresight would be nice.

>>243932
>dave gingery

There needs to be a tier-based leveling system with his books and projects as the cores for leveling up your DIY skills.

>furnace

FYI: This word enable autosage for your thread. It cannot be bumped. The reason is it starts with "fur"

>>244127
It's current only page 4, and has maybe 3 days before it dies. But no one will ever see it on the first page, so you might as well make a new one, without "fur"

>>244127
>>244129
That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard of.

They told me to bump this thread

>>244127
>>244129

fuck you moot

picture unrelated, testing bump

New thread restored to here: >>244411

>>244318
I agree. But moot (et al) decided to flag ALL words beginning with "fur"