The not so lost wax casting.

That sounds like a good setup. I'm thinking 50 gallon blue plastic barrels might be the way to go, but sealing them after cutting them in half isn't going to be easy.

400 lbs is s good amount. I need to get more for the eagle. Might buy a paltry 40 to 80 pounds of slurry lol.

What did he use to fluidize the sand? Compressor or fan?

 

His blue barrel has a lid and a metal band that latches it shut. When the level of the barrel goes down, he just scrapes the crap on the walls back down into the slurry. It dissolves with the twist of the mixer. Keep looking at other barrels, you'll find one with this style lid.

 

missed one... His fluidized bed is done with compressed air. Here is a link. After seeing this, I bet you build a pair of these!

 

That was very helpful. So a stiffer fabric made the difference. I may just make one of those. I'll have to look into the price of suspendaslurry compared with remets stuff.

I hope he wears a mask when fluidizing the sand like that. Restrictive lung disease is no joke.

 

I don't know if he does. He's got more energy than people a third his age. You should see that foundry he has cobbled together out of parts and pieces. It's not pretty, but impressive in it's function. Lots of brain power when into the setup. It's two big ass shipping containers placed across from each other and a half dome roof with doors. The containers serve as wax room, slurry room, and storage. He runs everything by himself standing on a platform. The platform is excellent if you think about it. If he gets a spill, he won't be standing in a puddle of bronze. I didn't think it was appropriate to film his setup when I was there. Too many dishonest turds in the world these days.

 

I could be wrong, but silica sand that has no super fine dust and rounded grains should be ok, e.g. washed beach sand, whereas used sand blasting silica sand will have dust with sharp grains that are hazardous and cause irritation.

 

The risk with anything silica related is basically that the sharp tiny bits get into the lungs and slice it up (after all its basically breathing in powdered glass). The lungs don't heal well and over time you get silicosis which is scarring of the lungs which causes them to be very stiff and you can't take deep breaths anymore because your lungs are one giant scar, they also don't work right so the tiny little breaths that are possible don't give the body enough oxygen and that causes terrible shortness of breath. Nasty business I wear a P100 respirator every time I deal with it. There are also other risks of inhaling it but silicosis is a more common one.

 

Hey zap, I learned HEIGHT is more important than anything else when you make a boil out pot. Mine is 18" tall and not tall enough. If I build one, it would be 16"x16"x 24"
I boiled this out tonight with 1" to spare. Boiled the flame out 3 times. What a pain. Looks like a success. Only crack I see is in one pouring cup and I did that last night digging out the hook with out heat.

 

Patched up and into the kiln. I must not have completely boiled out all the wax. Did you guys know microcrystalline wax stinks like hell when it's on fire?? Well, my kiln WAS snow white after burning out the rope. This was at about 800f. Once she hit about 1100f the smoke and fire quit and the shells are starting to turn white. Hope I dodged a bullet. I AM going to work out a better dewax/burnout rig. I ALMOST ran out of propane today during the boil. That would have sucked. I want to run on natural gas. No way in hell can I EVER run out of that. AND IT'S CHEAP... So cheap it's almost FREE. My gas bill in the summer rarely hits $50 bucks and that runs the water heater and outside gas lighting burning 24/7. In the winter it might hit $125.

 

Rock and roll. It was only 108 degrees outside today, but I pressed on and made it happen. Not sure if I got lucky
or shell is just THAT forgiving. Here I go and recommend to our new guy to run vents to the top of the cup and here I
go and forget to add them myself. Do as I say, don't do as I do. Bronze chasing should be pretty minimal.

It's always like Christmas after a pour.


Looking promising.. I was worried about the tiny doodads.





Rope texture came through. Remember, this wasn't real rope. I put in ever scratch in the wax by hand with a pin tool.


The tiny rope details came out! I extruded 1/16" brown wax and twisted a pair into rope.





Those are the smallest pouring cups on earth! I had JUST ENOUGH to complete the pour. Not a drop to spare. Gotta get
the balls to start using my #10 crucible. This was a #6 about 3/4 full. Total bronze weight here is 10lb 4oz

 

Nice pours. They came out very well. Still think you could have had a good result with real rope with a longer burn out but these look almost identical especially with the pin tool marks.

 

The detail is quite impressive.

 

thanks guys. I'm not giving up on burning out organics. I'll mess with it some other time.

 

It was too hot to do that wax work in the garage. I parked my butt on the couch and worked it on my lap. I'm putting AC in the garage this winter.

I got some chasing and welding done today. I had a change of mind on how this thing will mount. I'm going to weld a 3inch bronze piece to the back at the 6 o clock position. I'll then sink it into a chunk of granite or rock from their ranch. I want it to look like its floating. Tomorrow I'll see if my local granite shop has anything that might work.



yeah, I found one tiny section of rope on the 2nd one that didn't fill. Sucks to be me somedays.


This thing is ridiculous.

 

If it doesn't work, I'll twist some 1/16" bronze tig filler wire and weld that sucker on. Now where are my safety wire pliers?