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Sawdust as Facing Ingredient

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awemawson:
No immediate plans for casting at the moment Steve, life’s got in the way - or rather sorting stuff after storm Eunice. Working on an external isolator and socketry for a site wide generator- surprisingly complicated to do it safely AND get the earthing right for a PME supply. Extra motivation as we had yet another half day power cut on Tuesday

vtsteam:
Here are all of the cylinder and piston castings for the Rider engine. All using sawdust facing sand.

tom osselton:
Beautiful!

ironman:
The surface finish looks great to me so the sawdust does work.

When I made that video about sawdust I was going to use a Aussie hard wood called iron bark which has less than zero chance of getting it else where in the world. So I used particle board which is available every where and I suspect that it is mostly pine sawdust. The video was made because so many people could not get coal dust. I got the idea from when I spilled iron on a iron bark plank and the spilled iron was very shiny instead of the rough surface when exposed to air.

 I will be still using coal dust as I have a lifetime supply.

vtsteam:
Hi Ironman, thanks greatly for visiting here again!

I'm thinking particle board might be good also because of the binder in it. Maybe also denser and less quickly water absorptive -- I don't know, just guesses.

My first try with white pine sawdust at 5% didn't work because it just wouldn't hold together, I might have had better luck if I'd added more water, but I didn't want to go overboard with that.

I did get pretty good results at 2% white pine sawdust. It held together okay for molding. I'm only mentioning the exact type of pine to say exactly what I did, not because it is necessarily better. Just helps to identify what was tried so far.

I will probably try more experiments here with different types and amounts to understand sawdust in facing sand a little better.

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