My blacksmith friend contacted me about a possible casting job. He has a customer who is repairing a carousel horse of some kind and need these stirrup parts cast: I've only seen these 3 images of the originals and I'm not 100% sure what they are made of, but I think bronze would do the job. Just thought I would see what the hive mind thinks first though before I reply. I have 2 questions: 1) Am I about to bite off more than I can chew and wind up leaving my friend in a bind by promising I can sand cast these? They look a little thin but I think it should be doable... 2) Any of you feel like sharing any thoughts about pricing, if it's not too personal? I did one casting job for this guy before, some of you may remember the copper tube I helped him cast around a stainless steel argon condenser coil. Traded a couple hours of chatting while melting some copper in his shop in exchange for a day of blacksmithing lessons. It was a great time and a memorable first run for my new furnace. Other than that I've only sold a very few castings, and all of those have been to friends. Mostly I just do this for the pure fun of it, but it would be nice to help this guy out and maybe it will bring me more opportunities for interesting casting projects in the future to help fund my hobby. I have no idea how you guys who do sell your stuff regularly figure out what to charge... Jeff
I'm guessing they are cast iron. Pricing would be a molding fee of 25.00 And then 10 bucks each casting in bronze or brass. Thats assuming you can use the originals for the patterns.
+1 everything David said , they could be done in Brass making gas issues go away as easily as Bronze unless he only wants a very few, I would really want to make a matchplate. small loose parts are a pain to sand cast, but it is certainly doable. if you end up workin off the originalls, sand blast them, then give them many coats of Auto sandable primer (my go-to pattern finish) & knock them out you could whip up a plaster follow boards easily also, and make your life easier V/r HT1
You don't do investment casting. Tell him to take them to a real jewelry store and have them cast in silver. 75bucks for a pair and he'll be done. Or is it time you buy a box of ultravest and come to the dark side??? They are so small, by the time you buy all the stuff to cast these, you'll be so far in the hole, you'll wish YOU paid a jewelry shop for him.
I'd absolutely be out if they needed to be investment cast since I have never tried that, but I'm pretty sure they were and can be made in a sand mold. Jeff
Ooooh, a paying job! See if the owner can do the prep work before he sends it. Otherwise you'll be working for about a dollar an hour.
If those things are going to be painted, you could cast them out of just about anything, Aluminum, Bronze, dried cat poop. Even oven baked FIMO clay would work, it's decorative. Is this horse valuable? If it is, raise the price! Some people need a good schlacking to feel like they bought something of quality that took skill to replicate or create. The art is not going so high someone else gets the job. My thing is, if you think the job should be so cheap, make it YOUR DAMN SELF! People do this crap to pilots all the time. There are many guys that fly for recreation, but a guy that does this stuff for a living is a different animal. Pay me for what I know, not for what I do or you can spend 30years collecting knowledge and get back with me on that one. Look at Ht1, he's an expert in his field, I wouldn't expect him to make a pair of these for 50bucks in brass. 10bucks? sure if you are ordering 100pairs..
I hear what you're saying. But I don't think polymer clay would hold up too well when someone tries to mount up using the stirrup these parts will connect to the rest of the horse! Might be amusing to watch them try though! I'm not even sure I'd trust these parts in aluminum tbh. Maybe? Jeff
Just found this, kinda looks like the same parts, but it's too low res to zoom in enough to be sure, or to determine if they are cast aluminum or just painted silver or what... Jeff
Your parts are only about 1.5" in length. Surely not big enough for am actual strap for a real stir up Kids carousel horse maybe??
+1 One of a kind, one off. Count the hours off for each step and multiply by $40. No apologies. You know darned well you'll be spending at least 3 hrs molding and pouring them. You could probably even get by providing rough castings and let them do the finishing. You wouldn't be shitting on anyone. They may well have asked you because absolutely no one else will do it. We're a small group here and only one in a million do what we do. I met an old man a while back. Pushing 90. He was shocked when he found out I had a hobby foundry. He provided me with an ancient silicone rubber mold of an arrowhead that he had tried for 20 years to get cast. He needed 12. No commercial guys would touch it and he knew of nowhere else to go. Long story short I became fascinated with this guy: lifelong boy scout (hence the arrowheads. Coincidentally he led 2 friends of mine and several others to their Eagles when they were boys.), head of truck maintenance for the NYS Truway Authority, expert woodworker, Mason, makes his own sauerkraut every year, etc, etc. Right up my alley. He's like the old man in the hardware store in the old days. So I spent the time and made as many hydrocal molds for a patterns as I could until the silicone started coming apart (3 patterns) and made the old boy his arrowheads out of everdur. I was involved in scouting for 18 years myself and didn't want the money but he made me take something. I settled for $50. These arrowheads were to be inlaid into plaques and given to 12 specific boys who had achieved an award called "The Arrow of Light" that a scout gets when he's 11 years old. It turns out that he had the plaques already made, engraved with the boys' names and the inlays already cut, but they sat in his attic in storage for 20 friggin years because he couldn't get the castings made. He delivered those awards to the 31 year old men this summer, one to a boy's family posthumously. So that's a nice story and Pete gets to go to heaven after all, but the point is, no one else does what we do or at least we're few and far between. Whether your being altruistic or profit motivated (nothing wrong with either one) get your due. Pete
Thats a Cool story. I had the arrow of light. That was Webelos, right before boy scouts. By the time I showed up at the boy scouts in the 1980s... I sensed something was off with the entire show. I went home and told my folks I was finished. Cub scouts was a ball and no one tried to touch me. Today the scouts can piss up a rope as far as I'm concerned... They got woke so now they can go broke. I agree, what we do is really a rare skill. People are floored when they see my stuff. Even after explaining the arduous process, they have a confused look... That look goes away when I tell them how much I charge. I'd still like to sell the porch light, but if not, I'm not bothered. My wife loves it sitting on the table in the foyer.
That really IS a nice story Pete. (It's a very nice porch light too Jason.) This is the only for-real foundry close to here that I've discovered, and mine's the only hobby foundry that's anywhere at all nearby to my knowledge: http://www.alloy-foundry.com/ I really ought to see if I can chat up someone there who can show me around sometime, it's only a 40 minute country drive away but not in a direction I ever have any reason to be going. I didn't start trying to learn the black arts of metal casting to get rich, it just seemed like really fun hobby. That said, I'm only an altruist when there's something in it for me. So if the lady with the merry go round who's looking to pay for parts doesn't like whatever price I ask for, she can go ask at Alloy Foundry, I'll be fine and they'll probably do a good job. But their website wasn't real easy for me to discover before I knew what name to search for or that they're in Merrickville... Josh gets these requests because people in Ottawa who don't know a foundry from a forge have already heard about him due to the morning drive radio ads for his blacksmithing school ("a REAL forged in fire experience"). He's added 2 more forges and added new classes and added half again the number of students per class he teaches, all since my last visit. If he keeps growing ike that, maybe this'll happen more often. Besides just having fun, wanting to be the guy he calls first when it does is a big part of my motivation to make these parts (for a fair price). My day job covers the bills and I never have to work late so anything extra is a bonus. Let someone else worry about marketing and finding me occasional side jobs instead of using up my own free time, this way I am free to take or leave them as I choose and keep things fun. Jeff Not a clue, I will add any details I discover later about the horse in question.
I'm kind of surprised there's not more foundries in your area. It's not obvious from the website what their management structure is, if it's family run, there's a reasonable chance you'll be well received. A number of years ago, I got a fairly extensive tour of a family run foundry in Mississauga. The owner, a man in his 60's or maybe early 70's showed me and a friend around the place, he was very proud of the business he had built and was happy to answer any question we had.
I'm afraid the only thing that is made in Ottawa is paperwork. The old Beach foundry building was torn down in the 80's to build a mall. A boring one. No more cast iron stoves with fancy maple leaves on them. http://kitchissippimuseum.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-beach-foundry-kitchissippi-landmark.html?m=1 Winchester ON where Mr. Beach the founding founder(?) was from is just 10 minutes from my house. http://kitchissippimuseum.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-construction-of-holland-cross-time.html?m=1 The old foundry building across the river in Hull Quebec sat empty or serving various other purposes for years before becoming a sports center back in the early 00's. The new city owned parking lot out front is huge and outrageously priced for being in such a shit part of town. But there's 2 government office buildings right across the street full of workers who'd rather drive in from Ottawa than transfer between the 2 cities' public transit systems to be squeezed for parking money. The bastards even cracked down on local homeowners who were renting their driveways out for 1/3 the price. They never caught my guy though. https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/hist/hull/rw_23_ie.html If there are more that are still around, they're well hidden. Jeff
So the horse pic above does show the same stirrup holders as these. It's from about 1918 whereas the customer's is from 1920-1925. They were both made by Allan Herschell. These are missing the parts I'll be casting: https://carousels.org/psp/RecreationPark/043_2.html But you can see them in some of the zoomed in views of the pix here: https://antiquecarousels.com/product/ca-1920-spillman-tucked-head-jumper/ The lady is going to stop by on Saturday afternoon to drop off the patterns after cleaning off the blobs of paint etc. She says they look like aluminum. I considered all your advice and came up with a price I thought I could live with, but get this: She misunderstood my email and thought I meant I was asking that much per part. So, what she thought she heard was actually double what I really said... Even so, she seems thrilled just to have found someone who can do it at all. Clearly I need to think bigger next time... I didn't correct her but maybe I will when I see her, we'll see how well I sleep tonight first. She also wants to leave the originals with me in case she ever buys another Allan Herschell horse. FWIW I believe those horses go for about 6k on average. AND it's Friday AND the boss is off AND it's a long weekend coming up. So life is good. I just hope it stays that way til after I get my CT scan results back from the other day. Jeff
TAKE HER MONEY!! As we thought, no foundry in their right mind would answer the phone for what she's paying you. Hope all is well on your scan. I abhor doctors, hospitals and any liquid that comes out anything living or dead. I'm known as a sympathetic puker. If I hear, see or smell it, I'll be right along with you! Hell, I have trouble poop scooping the back yard without gagging my ass off! My wife thinks it's hilarious!
Right on cue. Who doesn't like money? I do. I worry that she might reread my email and realize her mistake though, and switch from thinking she got a fair deal to feeling ripped off. I would. Thanks. I hate being in hospitals and getting needles and being irradiated and going to the doctor too, but I'm not getting any younger and sometimes it's the only smart option. For my part, I'd much rather just have them cut me a little so I can bleed into a bucket for a minute rather than the usual way they take blood samples... if that were an option. Pain just hurts, but needles make me nervous and queasy, especially the kind that suck stuff OUT and/or get left inside you for more than just a second or two. Jeff
Couple of thoughts. My experience with being handed originals cleaned and painted by the owner and expecting to be able to plop them in sand and pack them up as patterns has not worked out either time. Sure the casting shown was once cast and it once had draft, but after it came out of the sand someone ground it, maybe ground it a lot. There is a good chance it lacks draft unless you can still see the parting seam. Whoever is cleaning them up is not a sand caster and will not be able to carefully check for draft or smoothness of surface. You may as well plan on the time—-a few hours, blasting, grinding in or adding on draft, priming, sanding, priming, sanding etc. Charging for your work is really hard. Like most crafts, people are more than willing to admire the work, but reluctant to pay for the skill and time or they feel over-charged if you charge over a “tip” fee. In my case, I probably was paid about 2 or 3 dollars an hour and even then the recipient expressed no overwhelming gratitude for the numerous parts made, the skillS previously painfully acquired to actually know how to make a workable pattern, mull sand, pack a mold, melt metal, pour it with risers and runners successfully eliminating shrinks, voids etc., pack up the parts, take them to the local shipper, and make sure they arrived intact to the person ordering them. I personally got some satisfaction and pleasure doing the work, but got minimal financial reward or expression of appreciation. So, do it for the fun and/or keep track of the hours you spend ( realizing how many hours you already spent building your equipment and learning the craft) and don’t apologize. 40 bucks an hour is a very reasonable price for use of your skills, tools, and foundry. I will be surprised, though, if they are willing to pay. Denis
