Sand Tray For Casting

[awemawson]

Today I bent up a 'sand tray' to be a resting place for flasks and ingot moulds when using the Raydyne Tilting Induction Furnace.

The idea is to limit any spillages - a 'good idea' following the pretty horrendous fire that I recently experienced casting scrap aluminium to ingot. It will be partly filled with sand, which not only limits the spillages but will act as a firm base for flasks and moulds.

Bent up from 2 mm (14 gauge) Zintec sheet and 32 inches wide, the long edge was pretty much at my limit to bend on the F J Edwards. The folder will do a generous 48 inches but my arms won't !

I'm undecided whether to weld the corners. Doing so will obviously destroy the zinc plating and at 2 mm it's stiff enough not to move at all. I may just carefully dress the corners tightly shut - they are close but not perfect.

[Pete W.]

How about four rivetted fish-plates?

[ddmckee54]

+1 for the rivetted fish plates, although I'm not sure you even need to do that.

This thing doesn't need to hold water, just sand.  Maybe a bead of caulk in the corners would do it?  You could caulk both side if you want it "pretty".  At 2mm thick, it's not like the edges are going to be flimsy and want to flap in the breeze.  Probably the only time the edges would want to flex is when want to move it out your way for storage.