Hello from Tennessee!

Hey everyone! Im a new member from Tennessee. I started out as a young kid running around barefooted in an aluminum foundry that my grandfather oversaw. I was fascinated by melting something old and making something new from it. We made lots of unique trinkets and things on the side and he taught me a lot about the old traditional way of doing things. Fast forward 40 years and I have been an employee at Lodge Mfg. for 29 years. I have been in the patternshop for 28 years and have been in charge of all gating and layouts for our foundry for the past two years but have been involved in every pattern setup and gating design since 1994. I have been using Solidworks and NovaFlow software for the past couple of years in an effort to reduce our scrap rate. These are some truly amazing programs that has helped us reduce our scrap rate tremendously over the past year. I haven't always had the use of this technology and I was lucky enough to have started out while we still had hand molding and horizontal applications along with cores and all of the dirty and dusty shakeout equipment that goes along with them, so I got a hands on coarse from the school of hard knocks. We updated our foundry a decade ago and just recently built a new foundry beside our existing one. We do not have any cores or horizontal equipment now and only use high volume DisaMatic molding machines and use Didion rotary drums to shakeout now. I do not currently have a home foundry, but have helped a few people who do. I enjoy seeing fellow foundrymen post on problems and seeing people work together to solve issues. I hope to be able to add to any knowledge or insight that I have and hope that I can learn some things for the rest of you. Thanks for letting me join the forum and hope to converse with some of ya'll real soon!

 

How cool is that!

 

Welcome Billy. We've been waiting for you!

Pete

 

Maybe some stuff I can help out with occasionally...I hope....but I suspect I will be t learn more from you guys.

Awesome! I look forward to sharing ideas and information.

 

Well, you'll find what we lack in cash, makes us think outside the box quite a bit. Be prepared to see some high quality redneck engineering!

 

Hahaha! I received my masters degree from the RedNeck institution of higher learning where my father was an instructor. I have seen some really cool stuff and some innovative ideas on here already.

 

I've got my bachelors from Redneck U. I can duct tape and bailing wire with the best of them!

 

This is undoubtedly a resourceful and creative group. Most of us are average joe's with non-foundry life experiences to work with but there are a few here who are pros either in the industry or well experienced in the hobby that the rest of us take advice from to help us be successful. I'm in the former catagory and I can tell you I am very grateful for that guidance. There can be so much time and effort involved in all the aspects of a particular project that just being bright and quick on your feet isn't enough. For instance most of the foundry equipment I have was built from stuff that filters through my scrap heap. Some have nicer scrap heaps than others and I buy what I have to, but when you're just doing this for grins and there's not really any return on investment other than personal satisfaction, being willing to ask for advice and being willing to try other people's ideas really helps me along. Of course different people have different ways of thinking so some are willing to go down some rabbit holes deeper than others are willing to, and they come back here with their findings (and pictures) and everyone else can benefit from it. So I don't have to just wing-it all the time, although sometimes I do. That's were I often get into trouble and it's usually with gating. And when that's done incorrectly or haphazardly you know what can follow- scrap, major defects, or tons of cleanup. I've gotten pretty good with a file but that's not what I signed up for!

Pete

 

Sometimes we see things that make us scratch our head and say...what or how the hell did that happen...those are the times we learn the most. A good mold and clean melt are by far the most important factors in making a good casting. Without both of those you will have scrap regardless of the gating system you have.

 

Hi Billy, my wife and I moved back to Ohio a couple years ago. We lived up on South Pittsburg Mountain. Our Neighbor worked at Lodge, Ernie Wann. He works somewhere else now, another foundry. I had hoped to work at Lodge but my health just wouldn't cooperate. I enjoyed the Cornbread festival every year. It's a shame they cancelled it this year. I was told they didn't make a skillet for this year, is that right. Love to have one if they did. I got at least 50 Lodge skillets hanging in my house.
I worked in a steel mill before we moved to Tenn in 2013. I was a chem lab tech, I did the analysis and tensile testing. Welcome

 

Cool Jammer! It's a small world. I looked at buying some property up there recently. To answer your question...I do not think we put that logo into production. They may have and I just don't know. I dont usually handle the logo work anymore unless I'm filling in for one of the other guys. I'll let you know in the morning.

 

Has the foundry been closed through all this stuff? Would it be possible to get a picture of the Logo? I was also creeping on your facebook, looks like we know some of the same people. Of course, Marion county isn't that big.

 

Thanks for joining! And welcome!

 

They never approved the artwork on the logo this year...guess they knew it was going to be canceled. I will see if I can get a hold of a copy of the artwork but I doubt anyone still has it since it was not approved. They usually like to wait til the very last second to get artwork done and then get really nervous about whether we will make the deadline and then we have to pray that we dont make a mistake while we are cutting them out. LMAO
Yeah...Marion is not that populated...just how I like it. LOL I imagine we know a few of the same folks. We did shutdown for a week and a half at the onset of the big scare but have been in overtime mode ever since. One thing about cast iron cookware...when everything else is going to crap our business usually picks up. Same for pandemics or recessions. I guess when money gets tight people look for the things that will last longer...???

 

Please dont share this pic.

 

Well this is a public forum so if your going to be in trouble, maybe you should remove the picture. I've heard that they can be kind of nasty at the company sometimes.

Maybe we should PM each other if we want to chat.