hello everyone, thought id come and introduce myself and start to get to know you all. my names lewis im a mature aerospace engineering student in the uk and ive been wanting to get going with casting for some time but for a number of reasons not gotten started before i have very limited experience with casting namely using an oxy aceteline torch to melt some silver and cast a few (poor quality) rings some years ago but nothing more substantial. ive joined up to ask for some advice on building the furnace itself but ill make a seperate thread for that. im mostly interested in casting bronzes and iron at some point i would like to be able to cast some iron impellers however i want to start off with simpler stuff first. ive found it very interesting and educational reading the forums so far and i hope to be able to contribute and be a part of the community here anyway i hope thats a fair introduction if you have any questions just let me know
Welcome Lewis, You've come to the right place. There are a good number of successful furnace designs here as well as tried and true burners. Beware of YouTube. There's some great stuff out there, but a lot of bad information too and it can be hard to sort out (although shorts and flip flops are a good indicator). There are a lot of ways to do this on the cheap but don't be afraid to spend a little when it's warranted. Happy casting! Pete
Thankyou for the welcome Pete, Jeff. Ive tended to avoid youtube on this topic with the exception of luckygen1001 because i see quite a few "furnaces" which seem to me very poor designs and they tend to be much more common than the well thought out ones that ive seen on the forums here My intention is to build my first furnace with growth in mind and so im going to try to get it right first time, while i want to save money id rather spend a bit more up front and build a good quality furnace that will last me rather than something cheap that ill need to replace relatively fast. i have access to an unlimited (for my purposes) free supply of used cooking oil so that will be my fuel. thankyou again and i look forward to being part of the community
Welcome Lewis. Sounds like you have a furnace and WVO burner build in your future. I'm sure you'll receive plenty of support and good advice from the forum members. Best, Kelly
Hello Lewis. Lots of helpful folks here. Many of us have YouTube channels, but you'll find we are not your typical youtubers. While our content may be boring, its accurate! Got a method in mind yet? Lost foam? Sand casting? Lost wax? Lost PLA? Lots of options these days available to the modern metal caster and all fine in their own respects.
thankyou guys, im already working through the costing of a few designs i have in mind and ill probably run that through the forum for some advice in the relevant section soon. at the moment im mostly interested in sand casting and lost foam though with access to a 3d printer i will be looking to move into lost PLA for the more precise parts i want down the line. though im sure at some point i will experiment with all of them.
Well if you're ever in the Newcastle area, give me a shout, I'd be happy for you to come to visit my foundry :c) It's actually in Jarrow, South Tyneside.
Welcome. My furnace build videos starts here if you are interested. I'm in the UK. Don't mention luckygen to me. [
im going to assume i shouldnt ask about luckygen and you. however you seem eager to tell me so why not elaborate
We all have our favorite materials and methods. Most of us have generally agreed to disagree in a gentlemanly fashion, and that is how it should be. Keep it about metal casting, and keep the personality clashes out of it. Take it from me, those clashes never lead to anything good, and are very detrimental to a forum. David has a good thing going here; don't mess it up now. Avoid clashes like the plague! So how many iron casters do we count now on this forum? I am expecting Tobho Mott to do iron any day now. Join it iron club if you are not in it. Its great fun, and a good hurdle to overcome. As they say in these parts "How bout them iron pours fellas/ladies (lots of women do iron pours; I have video evidence)?" .
Welcome Lewis ... I'm also in the UK but in the South (near Portsmouth). I've been a member here for only a short while and the folks here are supremely friendly and helpful. They also have a great sense of humour which is essential in any discipline IMHO!
Thankyou Gavin. ive already noticed the community is very friendly here, its what encouraged me to sign up and ive only been proven correct so far
Hello from Suffolk. Not much to see here but hoping to get my foundry stuff set up again when we move.
You guys really are a hoot to hang around with. Long live THF! I love the way this forum works, especially with photos. If I start typing on a laptop, I can pull the same thread or PM up on my phone and the text will be there before hitting the post button. From there I can add photos from my phone easily. It such as dramatic improvement from the outdated vbulletin sites. To you new guys, if you can manage to pony up a few bucks and become a banner member, it really helps David with the website. Notice we have no ads and all your photos are stored here locally. That saves you tons of time from hotlinking from crappy sites like photofuket. We lost a lot of valuable information with that debacle. I'll save you some reading, but this is why THF exists in the first place. I'll take my salesman hat off now, I get nothing out of this except a cool place to hang out, learn new stuff and this keeps me outta the bars. My wife approves wholeheartedly!