Lancaster Foundry Supply Co. Www.lancasterfoundrysupply.com 2314 Norman road Lancaster PA, 17601 717-394-0753 Owner John Mentzer, 717 two seven eight 7906 _________________ I ordered as much as he could ship in a standard priority box, ~45-60 lbs. Called the main number, they gave me the owner John's number. Was able to talk for a while. The bronze comes from Toronto, everdur. It arrived, 4 days later, 47 pounds of bronze shipped for $218.00.
Lookin' good. You'll love everdur if you've never tried it before. The stuff they sell from Lancaster color matches perfectly with regular bronze tig rod from the welding supply shop. $4.63 per pound is super cheap. Only way to get it cheaper is to live right there and pick it up in person to save the $15 shipping.
I see you got the swiss cheese variety. WTF? If you pick it up in person, you probably get to pay sales tax.
Having used the silicon bronze from Lancaster foundry supply, and knowing others that have as well. Your just fine despite what the pilot who gets you there most of the time says.....
Unsure about sales tax. But yeah the metal is fine. The holes are probably just from moisture or something in the mold.
I'm sure it's fine, but you gotta admit, that stuff looks like shit. Let's see how much dross he has to scoop off before pouring.
I think you two care more about this than I do. I will pour this in my next piece and see what happens.
not really.. but you are really going to like professional alloyed bronze. It solves a ton of problems.
What? Sil-bronze? Any mostly copper metal can be gummy to machine. I turned a lump of bronze on the lathe recently and I thought it did pretty good actually. Depends I guess on what you are doing with it. (and I'm a baby machinist) Aluminum bronze would probably machine the best if that's what you are looking for. The stuff is pretty hard!
Uh, as an example: 660 bronze isn't too bad. It has a fair bit of Lead. 90-10 bronze, on the other hand, is grabby. I had to chisel out a drill bit someone else had snapped off. Closest thing to 90-10 (tin) bronze in the Machinist's handbook has a machinability rating of 20. Adding 2% zinc, and 1% of lead improves this number to 40. Supposedly, the machinable flavors of Silicon Bronze have a trace of zinc. The stuff with no zinc is the grabby kind, or so I have read.
It doesn't need more than ~ 2% zinc - I think - to improve the machinability. This taste of zinc might mess up the welding, though...
Isn't that the truth! I had to learn that one the hard way. Anyone want any zinc-phos-bronze tig filler wire? You get the shipping and I'll mail you a couple pounds of the useless shit!
Isn't that for oxy-acetylene? I've got some no-zinc silbronze Tig rod/wire... wish I had $$$ to spare (right now), as I'd send some out your way... Got an aged parent that wants to see me (asap,) and that's eating most of the available funds right now...
thanks Dennis. I'm good on sil-bronze tig wire. The stuff I've been buying is a dead ringer for the bronze I cast here. I got my local mom and pop to stock the stuff so I don't have to get ripped off from AirAss! I scrapped my oxy-acetylene torch kit last year. It was one from the hazard fart and the regulators kept pissing me off. I'm on the straight acetylene turbo torch train now and couldn't be more happy. 1 big bottle and I never run out of o2.
What I'm after is a low/no fuming cuprous alloy that casts readily, machines decently, is passable for bushings, and solders decently. Or, and if it's reddish in tint, that's a plus. Got the phosphor copper a few months ago, got two salamanders - a #4 and a #6 - and have been saving scrap copper with the odd bit of brass. Just need to get a pouring shank done, as well as come-out tongs... planning to more or less copy the Mifco items.
