WARNING! Foundry work is dangerous and Burge almost died, and I burnt my finger, and you, you might die, but it's not my fault and I don't want you to blame me for for any crap you pull, or limbs you lose, and I don't want your family to blame me, or Burge or anyone if you die...unless it's not foundry related, then you can sue the pants off of anyone but me or Burge.

2-13-04

More updates to the gallery. The pictures are a little lower quality and load much faster. Email me and tell me if you prefer the images high-quality and slow or if you like the new faster images...or tell me if you want something in the middle. Burge will get me our latest pics in a few days so stay tuned.

2-11-04

You're in luck, I've updated the gallery and links sections. I added a few links and the gallery is now in a thumbnail orientation. Both of the sections now have super awesome graphics for titles so be sure to check it out and tell me what you think.

2-9-04

It's cold, OK?! We can't melt when it's like this. Of course, we're second semester seniors now so we should have a little more time on our hands, but we don't. We did try to melt a month or so ago; our problem is we got sick of having to light the burner ten times and tune it so much so we're finally getting a regulator and we're going to build the Reil burner. The Oliver Upwind burner was a good design, but we built it crappily and we need a burner with some more power now because our firebrick furnace is pretty large. We're going to order a flare from Zoeller Forge because the flare building process is beyond our abilities. The Reil burner and other burner designs as well as more forge and foundry info than an elephant has appointments(I don't get it either) can be found at Mr. Reil's Home Page Dan and Burge have high speed internet now, so bug them about making a decent gallery page, you don't know how painful it is for me to upload those pics on a 56k. Have fun and happy melting!

12-10-03

I'm not sure why I didn't update this much sooner. One week after the last update we casted our first object. The success of the week before in pouring some festively shaped ingots made us confident in our skill so we tried our hand at some lost foam casting. We got most of our lost foam casting info from, www.theworkshop.ca and a little from www.buildyouridea.com we got some sand blasting sand and a foam sheet from Menards. We decided to make spoons, because what is more useful than a spoon? So each of us whittled spoons out of the foam, we attached the handles with an aluminum pop can for the sprue and buried it all in the sand. The bucket wasn't quite deep enough so the sprued stuck out. That was a bad idea, I won't do it again and you shouldn't even try, well, if you're really interested in seeing what will happen, go ahead, but be warned. The pop can sprue collapsed and molten aluminum ran to the side of the plastic bucket and melted through it, landed on our wooden platform causing a small fire. The spoons came out fine though, except a lot of the sand is stuck to the aluminum, and spoons are surprisingly hard to make. Next time we will try the plaster dip a la buildyouridea.com. When we poured, the fire that comes from the foam itself was a lot larger than we expected, but we continued to pour. A milestone has been reached in our metalcasting experience. Recently, we haven't done much, school, work, and many other schedule conflicts have prevented us from melting. Winter break begins next Friday, hopefully I can fit something in there.

10-12-03

We finally did it!, We actually poured something! A friend of mine wanted us to make a mold of a drumstick out of aluminum so that he could make lighted, epoxy drumsticks. So, after two and a half months since our last melt we finally got some motivation to melt and so we fired up. We put a sheet of metal underneath the furnace and on top of the tabletop platform so that we wouldn't burn the laminate again. We couldn't keep the pressure up because we were running low on propane and we don't have a regulator so we got some more. Our last pour was cold and a little bit of iron had gotten into the crucible so we had to heat up all of the junk in the crucible before we could pour. The metal quickly loosened up and we got ready for our melt. We put some pieces of aluminum plate that Burge got into the crucible and som scraps of gutter that we've had for awhile in and got ready. We had fixed all of our previous problems, but we were still unsure if we could get through a melt problem free. After fifteen minutes we took a peek and the metal was liquid! We couldn't believe it, for good measure, we kept it going another five minutes. Dan poured, and we filled up a tray with a rooster, a jade and part of a spade to make some festive ingots. It totalled something like 5.5oz, a milestone has been passed here. It's about time we started the lathe!

9-01-03

One week comes, one week goes...but then again, nobody entered the contest...of course that was expected...anyway, the how-to guide has finally been uploaded, so have fun! We haven't melted anything for awhile, but I hope that we'll get a couple more melts in before winter comes.

8-11-03

In one week the website will get an overhaul, the updates here will look the same, but that column of links on the left that leads to very little information will be redone, I'll actually add some links, and the big, exciting news that we are extremely pleased to announce is that we will be hosting our own illustrated how-to guide! As I type this, Dan is finishing the illustrations. Although we haven't read any foundry guides ourselves to compare ours with, we feel that ours has something that the others don't have, and at a price they can't beat(free). So, make sure you're here for the big release party next Monday. We've also decided to do something special. We are going to have a drawing for autographed pieces of flowerpot crucible. Are we really so arrogant as to think that our names have any value, or we have any realy authority in the foundry community? Hell no! actually, we're setting ourselves up for a letdown when we receive fewer entries than there are pieces of crucible. In case your unclear, the flowerpot crucible was our first crucible, it failed, and it celebrates our how-to guide release because, you will probably fail a couple of times(at least) before you figure it out(that was the corniest explanation ever). Anyway, in order to enter, email Martin(me!) with your name, and that you're entering the flowerpot crucible contest somewher ein the subject or message. Winners will be announced one week after the release(8-25-03), and entries must be received by 8-22-03. By the way, I promise not to release your emails or information to anyone, I'm not really sure who I'd release it to anyway, but big name websites always have policies like this listed on there page and I thought that i could use one too.

7-27-03 4:57pm

The gallery is now up, there are a few missing pictures and formatting issues, I'll work on those tomorrow.

7-27-03

Wow, it's been a month since I updated! On Sunday we lit the new furnace for the first time. First we tempered the crucible, then we left it in the furnace to cool while we went bowling. When we got back we put some metal in the crucible and began to melt. The furnace is a lot bigger than Castro, so even though it insulates well we still had to use the blower. Dan kept saying some crap about how it was taking longer to melt with the new furnace than it did with Castro, but he is a moron, it only took longer because we were melting thicker pieces, instead of pop cans and gutter. Our pot wasn't completely melted but the propane tank was running low and the air was beginning to smell like tuna. Usually the propane tank gets cold and begins to sweat, it was doing this, but the sweat was turning into vapor, that added with the odd tuna smell prompted us to turn the foundry off. On a side note, Burge singed himself. Anyway, witht the foundry turned off we remove the lid and Dan lifts the crucible out with the tongs. The crucible didn't break! he starts pouring and a bit of liquid comes out and then freezes. Not a complete pour, however this is definitely progress over our last melts, we got a large amount of clean aluminum and we didn't destroy our crucible. Meanwhile, the lid was set down on cedar and the pleasant burning of cedar begins to cover up the noxious tuna smell. Apparently, the laminate table tob that we built the foundry on had caught on fire. This was my fault, I told Dan that the firebricks insulated well enough that the table wouldn't burn, however, I forgot to consider the cracks between the firebricks, we couldn't pour the fire out because we had put the crucible back in there before we realized the table was burning and the crucible had stuck itself to the bricks. We just waited for it to burn out. All in all, it was pretty sucessful, however, the firebricks weren't stacked completely tight and so we lost a bit of heat throught the sides however it was a negligible amount. The gallery is being completely redone, it will no longer be hosted on tripod(say goodby to pop-ups!) and put on earthlink, however, I will have to upload it from my house(56k modem) instead of using the schools broadband, so it will take a while to upload everything. In lieu of thumbnails, I will post 2-3 pictures per page.

6-27-03

We made some tongs for the giant crucible. We pulled the rubber out of two squeegees and bent them into U's then we attached some pipe through the handle of the squeegee and made a little hinged rocker thing. I'll get some pics up soon. We need to make a pouring thingy next, it'll probably be made of squeegees too. Also we are constructing a wheeled platform for the new furnace, we started with a pallet and we put some wood planks(maybe cedar) on top for a deck. Wh bought some casters and the furnace should be ready for construction this weekend.

6-19-03

The crucible came last Friday. This thing is a monster, it's somewhere around six inches in diameter, it's black and made of silicon carbide. I guess you can't lift a ceramic crucible with pliers, it'll break or something, so we're gonna have to get creative and make some tongs, big tongs. We also bought some more firebricks, we now have forty. Here's the plan for the new furnace, two firebricks will be the base. It will be surrounded by six firebricks for the wall. The wall goes up five layers followed by a lid made of three firebricks held together by this stuff that looks like angle iron, but it isn't iron. Our design was influenced by Martin Catt's foundry. You can see his design here here. What we liked about his design is that it uses bricks rather than regular refractory. Using bricks helps us in many ways: our perlite/furnace cement refractory was easy to make, but it was brittle, and its insulating abilities were acceptable but could be improved, the refractory also proved to be more expensive than we thought since we could only find furnace cement in one pound tubs at $2.20 a piece and we used somewhere around 8 tubs plus the other 2 tubs we bought to repair crumbling refractory. Of course, there are definitely better refractories out there than the perlite/furnace cement refractory, but they are more costly and complex to make. When it comes down to it, a brick is just a million times easier to work with. Our furnace is different than Martin Catt's in many ways: we are using firebrick, we are not cutting the bricks, we don't have a frame, however a cart to roll it with would be nice. Another advantage to brick is that it is easily repaired. We aren't mortaring or holding our furnace together with a frame, so it is really easy to replace damaged bricks, and at seventy-eight cents a pop, the bricks are cheap to replace too. A disadvantage to not having a frame is that we won't be able to have a hinged lid. A drawing of the new furnace can be found in the furnace section, the new lid, is in the lid section.

6-11-03

We've all been busy since school got out, but we should begin the new furnace this weekend. Our crucible search is now over thanks to a kind donation from a member of the hobby foundry community. Very soon, we will be receiving our very own silicon carbide crucible!

6-3-03

It's been a while since I updated, I'm not sure what we've done since. Here's my best guess at what has happened. We made a crucible out of a two inch steel pipe that was six inches long. We found a cap that would fit and screwed it to the bottom. I drilled two holes near the top for a couple of bolts. We began heating and all was going well until the aluminum pan that holding the mystery boiler material melted through and the lid collapsed on itself into the crucible. That really sucked, the aluminum pan was only meant to be temporary. After seeing a foundry on the backyardmetalcasting.com website that was made of furnace repair bricks we decided that we would buy two furnace repair bricks, and use them as a lid. We thought this would solve all of our problems. The furnace wasn't hot enough, so we made a better lid. The crucible wasn't good enough so we made a better one. And now, the lid wasn't good enough, so we made a better one. Unfortunately, when we visited our local furnace supply, they had no idead what furnace repair brick was, and referred us to a brick manufacturer down the road. This place was Northfield Furnace in Mundelein, IL. It was a very industrial place that was geared more towards bulk sales than anything, but we found the office and asked about furnace repair brick. They didn't have any. We asked if they had firebrick, and they did. Firebrick is used in kilns and insulates very well. We paid .78 for each firebrick, we bought 10. Today, we tried melting again, we were having success. Burge had found an aluminum chair and a couple of steel chairs, we sat in the steel chairs and melted the aluminum one. The fire brick was only warm to touch and we finally thought we might cast a shape. Fifteen or so minutes into the melt we hear a small pop, so we lift the lid a little and see that the crucible's bottom has melted out. Well, shit, that thing was steel or iron or something. Anyway, we had a destroyed crucible and aluminum all over the inside of our furnace. The drain hole did drain quite a bit of aluminum, and we will be able to melt it next time, but we have decided it is time to retire Fidel Castro. He has really helped us learn about casting and we will be able to use this information for our next furnace. We have decided that the best way to go will be similar to Martin Catt's foundry which can be viewed in the backyardmetalcasting.com gallery. Instead of furnace repair bricks we will be using firebrick, but the basic idea is there. The plan is to have a place to hold the blower better and a burner more suited to a blower than the Oliver Upwind design will probably be used. As school is now out and we are all employed, this furnace will be pretty nice. Burge thinks we should still try building our own crucible, but I think it's time to just buy the damn thing. Either way, we melted a steel crucible! That is some serious heat!

5-25-03

On Thursday we moved the foundry to Burges house because he has a field where we can burn the ground. We tested out our perlite lined crucible and it failed, it inuslated too well and it cracked. We used a tin can and melted a little bit but it couldn't handle the heat. Today, Sunday, we tried a coffee can and it didn't work very well, although we did get a lot of metal heated, it became semi-melted and we were able to make a really bad moon shaped cast. Also, our lid had broken on Thursday so we repaired it. We were going to add a regulator to the propane tank but it won't fit without a fitting so we are still without a regulator. Check the gallery within the next few days for pictures because Burges dad kindly took a bunch of action shots for us with the foundry fired up, pretty sweet. Also check the Gods page for Burge's dad to be added for his kind contributions to the foundry project. Also, Dan joined us for the last two burns. He has really helped us out a lot on the project and is drawing the plans for our foundry CAD style, expect those to be added to the site in a few days. He's is the third victim of absent-mindedness and picked up a piece of metal before it was completely cooled and burned his fingers. Check site in a few days for a picture. Dan's family also supplies numerous refreshments such as Upper lO and and RC which doubles as aluminum to melt. We still need a good crucible...if anybody has any ideas, please email.

5-19-03

On Saturday we finally melted our first metal. We made a lid out of this strange boiler material. It was very light. We put it into a cake pan, added a little water and rammed it all in. We drove two railroad spikes into it to make vent holes. We began using the Carnation Instant Breakfast crucible, it was filled with aluminum from cans and a spare piece of gutter, and 10-15 pennies. We lit up the furnace. When we put the leaf blower behind the burner it drowned the flame, so we had the blower gradually move toward the burner and we increased the gas accordingly and we got a serious flame. Flame was shooting through the two holes in the lid and out the sides of the lid. While Burge was holding the blower, I went to get some pliers to pull the crucible with. While in the garage I hear a the flame go out and the blower still going. The copper in the pennies, had vaporized, or was burning or something, because there was a large green flame, and when we lifted the lid, the crucible had a greed flame. We awkwardly poured the metal and ended up with some wonderful spots of metal that you can see in the gallery. Next we put our flowerpot crucible in, it was filled with only aluminum. We began heating for five minutes and when we removed the lid, the crucible was glowing red, The flowerpot had a crack where it had seperated about 2-3mm, but had not broken, and luckily hadn't leaked. We poured this aluminum and ended up with some more spots, these too are viewable in the gallery. The penny/aluminum alloy produced a smoother metal than the pure aluminum. The perlite in the bottom of the flowerpot was not damaged at all and so we have purchased another flowerpot and lined the entire thing with our refractory. One problem we may find with the crucible is that the perlite doesn't transfer much heat and may not heat the metal very well.

5-11-03

On Friday we tested out the foundry. We didn't melt anything! It appears our lid made out of a cement square allows too much heat loss. We used a blow dryer for a blower which helped, and we're gonna use Burge's leaf blower next time. We forgot to put teflon over the cap at the end of the burner and a flame came out that end which wastes propane. The flower pot did hold up as a crucible, and we tried using the can from a Carnation Instant Breakfast because it is made of steel, it too, held up. When switching crucibles I accident'y touched the cement lid with the tips of my fingers and suffered a slight burn as a result, BE CAREFUL! We did find an iron kitchen thing so that we can cast star and moon shapes. After the failed melt we decided to make a lid out of the perlite/furnace mortar refractory because it worked pretty well at insulating the sides. Hopefully next week we'll have a successful melt. Check the gallery for added photos.

5-6-03

This page is about the foundry my friend Burge and I made. We are sixteen and to my knowledge the only youngins in the web that have built a foundry. We began with the burner. We obtained the design from backyardmetalcasting.com it a 7" steel water pipe with a hole in the rear for a 1/4" pipe that has a #57(.0430") hole in it, this bit can be obtained from ACE hardware for about $2.50. following this hole there are 3 3/8" holes toward the side of the flame right after the hole where the pipe will go. Cap one end of the 1/4" inch pipe and fit the other to a propane tank to complete the burner. The flare shown in the picture is for use outside of the foundry so that you can test the burner and show it off to your friends, Burge is my only friend so the testing and showing off was done in one step. Now is a good time to warn all of you folks that a foundry is dangerous as is this burner and all applications involving propane, do not attempt anything shown on this website and expect any sympathy from me when you lose a finger, or arm, or your life, I'm not liable for anything you do. And this attempt at a disclaimer waives any of my responsibility for your actions. Anyway, when we went back to ACE to fit the 1/4" pipe to a propane hose they couldn't help, so we went to Menards(for those of you inregions without Menards, it is bigger than ACE, smaller than Home Depot) at Menards the guy there was pretty nice and helped us jerry-rig this thing together. he spliced our propane hose at the end that will go to the burner and put a ribbed, step-down fitting into it and sold us some gas rated teflon tape and held it together with a hose clamp, this has worked pretty well.
After the buner was completed we began our furnace. We bought a 5gallon stock pot from the grocery store and are using if for the furnace. Our refractory is 4parts perlite(in the gardening section) and 1 part Chimney Sweep brand Furnace Mortar, it comes in a tub in the furnace section. This is mixed in with 1cup water for every quart or so of perlite. We have two inches in the bottom and three inches surrounding the walls, this is pretty thick but we did a pretty shoddy job on it so we need the insurance of an extra inch. Also, the bottom of our furnace has a drain hole, and side has a hole at the bottom of the furnace chamber for the burner, it is tangent to the chamber so that the flame swirls around our crucible(the pot that will hold metal) Make sure the side hole is larger than the burner pipe so that you can get adequate air flow. Our crucible is made from a 4" flower pot, we haven't read of a flowerpot crucible(the backyardmetalcasting.com flower pot crucible furnace to my understanding does NOT use a flower pot for the crucible) anywhere and have yet to test it. The hole in its bottom has been lined with our refractory. If it works it will be a 69 cent crucible, if not, we only lost 69 cents.