Stumbled across this vintage casting kit for sale online. I wouldn’t have believed something like this existed without seeing the photos. Pretty cool how children were exposed to these types of skills at such an early age. Dave
That is really cool. They use to make some very nice toys back in the day, with a lot of functionality. An erector set was a must for any toy chest. I remember my brother had a fire engine with a ladder on it that had all sorts of operable functions, and was about 30" long. And there were a large number of cast iron toys on the market in the early 1900's, many of them operable such as the coin banks. My sister had a very elaborate chemistry set with perhaps 100 different chemicals/compounds/elements. They don't sell those any more either.
Looks old enough to be lead ingots. Probably pewter. Gotta love that Disney charm, "Professional. Educational."
I had fairly elaborate erector sets (and tinker toys, Lincoln logs etc), home chemistry labs, metal casting kits for toy army soldiers, and thermoforming toy that formed figures from ~5" square plastic sheets over dies.....I was wired to become an engineering nerd from the start. I'm so grateful my parents embraced it. If something didn't have a motor or engine, it was deemed to be oversight and needed one. Motorsports! It carried on through life. Best, Kelly
My brother had a toy like that. "Vac-U-Form" was the name as I recall. And available on ebay right now: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-19...y-Making-Set-With-Box-Used-Once-/232901239892 I still remember the smell of melting plastic sheets. And a kid down the street had "Incredible Edibles", which was the goo that you pour into mold and heat, and then eat. That is the sickest I have ever felt in my life, but an important lesson in what not to eat. Morse Code was big, as was ham radio, and there were all sorts of cool kits available at Radio Shack, including crystal radios, AM and FM radios, Morse Code key kits, speaker phone kits, etc. No microprocessors back then, so all discrete components. A buddy of mine build an oscilloscope from a kit. Those were the days for sure. Some very hands-on activities. Now everything is virtual. .
I keep thinking of that nuclear energy science kit, you know... the one that came with the chunk of uranium...
A friend of mine bought one of these guys' kits in a toy store in England when he was a kid back in the 80's, it came with a few molds, some kind of tiny little low melt alloy ingots, and I think some kind of pot to melt it in. He told me what the metal was called but I have forgotten. It wasn't lead. We melted some of that stuff on a Coleman camp stove and poured a few during a camping trip a few years back. I would have loved to do that when I was a kid if we had kits like that here then. https://shop.princeaugust.ie We had a great toy and hobby shop in my neighbourhood that two couples with young kids opened up and kept running for years, probably at a loss, just so that the kids in our neighbourhood had fun stuff to do that wouldn't get them into trouble. But they didn't have any children's foundries for sale there. Jeff
Bismuth and Indium alloys with melt temperatures in the 150F range are common. They are often used to fill tubes to bend them or to fill and support very delicate areas in machined parts. Afterward, you just melt it out. Some machinists call these materials white metal. In 2003 Bismuth was actually found to be a weak (the weakest) radioactive material.......there ya-go David. Of course Mercury melts at -38F and Gallium at 86F......but, well you know. Best, Kelly
I had a mercury maze as a kid, instead of a ball it had a dollop of mercury you shuffled around. Never did me any harm..........
My mother told of casting and painting toy soldiers as a child. This was a fairly common play activity for children at the time ---around 1930. Denis
I have friends that collect lead toy soldiers and date them to as early as the 1830s here in the US. They probably existed earlier than that in the US. Very few of them survived the US Civil War. They became lead balls for ammunition. It is very hard to authenticate them as there have been many reproductions. Funny how things change. My parents had no problem letting me handled lead, even casting molten lead. But back then there was no reason for concern. Best, Kelly
Well other than trace elements the antique toy soldiers are just lead and tin alloys and although I don't know them by that name, the engineering alloys I mentioned before that are exactly what you cite but Cadmium is only used at melt temps < 160F and then typically in the range of 8-10% for those alloys. Best, Kelly
Sorry, I meant the Mickey Mouse casting kit. The unused ingots in the photos are a bit dark in places from some sort of aging, that used to be a feature of old fashioned lead-tin "pewter" alloys. I used to use some sort of low melt alloy for gluing metal bases to glass lens blanks before machining and grinding. It was referred to as "Lead" but stuck to glass firmly which is a property of indium, you can solder to glass with an indium solder and the price skyrocketed with the advent of flat screen LCD tv's. My boss at the time was going to throw out about 1/3rd of a bucket of the alloy and replace it, as it was tarnished and full of oxides: I managed to wash it with boiling water and dish washing detergent and returned it to clean condition..... I wonder how much it would be worth for the indium content alone at USD$499 per kilogram.
