The Shop > Metal Stuff

Smelting

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John Hill:
....aaaahhhhh!  Memories! :D

As a schoolboy some of us friends got together and built a furnace in a backyard.  We went to the brick works and got the right clay to build up a suitable fireplace and someone at the brickworks made us some flower pots without holes in the bottom.

We used coal which we found in a big pile by the rail yards. ::)

The first lighting went really well and was blown by someone's mother's nice new horizontal vacuum cleaner, the aluminium truck pistons melted in what seemed to be no time at all and using big tongs we poured the molten metal into a box made of 3x2, wood!  ****

Then we got worried about what would happen if  the vacuum cleaner got dirty or anything so we extended the pipe and put the vacuum cleaner up out of harm's way on the roof of the garden shed.

The second burn went well too but for some reason which I forget we stopped before it was all melted, then when my friend restarted the vacuum cleaner there was a sickening boom from the roof of the garden shed and not much of the vacuum cleaner could be found.

Obviously when we stopped coal gas had risen up the hose into the cleaner and was ignited by the motor brush sparks.

***The wooden moulds was someone's idea and was claimed to be common in glass making, the molten metal chars the wood and from then on you have a carbon lined wooden mould! 

Darren:

--- Quote from: Andy on July 16, 2009, 12:39:05 PM ---Those sound like big lumps of metal and would need a fair bit of cutting up to get them into the typical 'back yard foundry' crucible.


--- End quote ---

Just get one of these.... :ddb: :ddb: :ddb:

&NR=1

Andy:
That is one scary machine  :bugeye:

Darren:
You wouldn't want to fall in would you....

Bit more reading and I see that alloy melts at around 600deg, there was me thinking it was more like 1,200 for some reason?

Having read a little bit and watched a few Utubes it doesn't seem to be that hard to achieve? People are making lathe and other machine castings at home and they seem to be doing OK?

More reading required...... :)

Darren:
What I have not yet found out is what to do with dirty alloy, ie with bits of steel in it.

I assume you knock the easy stuff off before melting, what happens to the rest. Does it just sink to the bottom of the crucible?

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