Adventures in Fire (part 2)

17 May 2014

Since my last attempt to smelt aluminum, I have done a little more preparation. New crucible, actual plan for carrying hot crucibles, and my first attempt at making actual casts instead of buckets of sand. Unfortunately, I still have a cell phone as my camera, I’ll fix that by the next update.

Time to Turn Up the Heat

(Note: If you do this at night- be careful)

If you are anything like me, you can’t really justify spending lots of money on a silicon carbide crucible I would recommend a thick bottomed steel pot from your local thrift store/garage sale. Putting a bolt in each side and buying some cheap tongs to hook those with is easy, cheap, and safe. (Pictures Coming Soon)

###Sand Casting Attempt //#2

My sand cast turned out much better this time. I buried a cube of foam (Hey- I’m lazy) and dumped my molten Aluminum down the shaft I made

I did not have enough molten to cast the entire cube, but it is a pretty good ingot nonetheless.

Fancy Plaster Molds!

I also attempted to make a plaster mold following this method Which turned out to be pretty hard/messy in the dark.

The general idea is to encase one half in soap covered (To stop sticking) Play-Doh

and to pour plaster-of-paris on top to create the first half of the mold.

Once that has set, peal the Play-Doh off the bottom, and coat that in soap.

Pour plaster on that, and Voila! Two part cast. I need to work on refining this process (preferably somewhere with good lighting) before I actually have a decent mold.