Carousel horse stirrup parts?

Discussion in 'Sand Casting' started by Tobho Mott, Aug 29, 2020.

  1. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Thanks. I think I was pretty clear that my estimate assumed the patterns are in suitable condition for molding, and that I'll have to have them in hand before I can be sure. But from the pictures I was sent, I don't see any huge problems. Fingers crossed...

    Even if the originals do need some work to become good patterns, I still think I should "easily" be able to clear $40/hr at the doubled price she seems agreeable to. If it's more work and takes longer than I think or I mess up and have to try a couple times, as you say I really am doing this just for fun anyhow. So I can live with that outcome. Still beats getting paid nothing for messing around with cheezypoofs and hot glue, am I right?

    I will make a point of keeping track of the time it takes me to finish the job. Maybe I will surprise myself.

    Jeff
     
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  2. dtsh

    dtsh Silver

    I can appreciate the situation, both from your side and hers. When I had the chair part cast by @DavidF I had a really hard time figuring out a value, in the end I just guessed. Much the same when I'm making things, I find it's hard to estimate and still arrive at a price that seems even remotely reasonable to me.
    Is she a member of a carousel group? Any others who might be interested as well? Could be an opportunity to spead her costs out and increase your profits.
     
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  3. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    I have no idea how many other local carousel horse enthisiasts she knows, if any, as we've only exchanged a couple emails so far. But she also owns another carousel horse, a knockoff of one made by the same company as this one. I also got those last links from her, so she is clearly dialed into that world at least somewhat. I'll try to find out more when she shows up tomorrow.

    Jeff
     
  4. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    Good idea to Google her too. She could be making serious money restoring them. In that case, you should not hesitate to charge her a fair rate for your time and effort.

    Denis
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2020
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  5. Jason

    Jason Gold

    That's not a fair assumption! People look at us and say if they can afford an airplane, a bottle of water should be 8bucks! You dont get to this point in life of owning super expensive toys by being stupid. I dont care what someone else makes as long as I got paid a fair amount. If they feel the need to royally screw the next guy, it's on them! At least I sleep well at night. I never look at someone and say well they can afford it. Makes you sound like an elitist sham of a politician from san Francisco! Might as well call it a "Rich tax" Horseshit!
     
  6. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    Easy there, Boy.

    There is a huge difference between taking rich folks for a ride and charging fairly for your labor to those who are directly profiting from your labor. If this is for a sweet little lady restoring the carousel her deceased father made and for her and her grandkids' pleasure that is far different from the entrepreneur using your nearly gratis casting to seal the deal on her 20K restoration project she is selling to some collector. I would charge folks in those two situations quite differently. You can do what you want. It is certainly not screwing the entrepreneur or should would call them, perhaps, the advantage taker if they are not paying you fairly right up front.

    Denis
     
  7. Jason

    Jason Gold

    I'm all for fair market. But my family doesn't mark up Rolex watches any higher than we mark up plain gold bands because the guy can afford a 10k watch and the young couple cannot.
     
  8. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    I see you do not see the distinction I am trying to make. It is not about the person or their perceived ability to pay, but about the intended use. In one case profit is the intended use of the castings. In the other restoration of a family heirloom is the goal. Yup, I certainly would charge my fair hourly rate to the first and might well go very easy on the second. If that makes me a communist San Francisco (the absolute worst possible I am sure) sham politician---eeeewww---well, I can live with that. I actually kinda like it. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Denis
     
  9. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Why should you care 2bits what she makes?:rolleyes:
     
  10. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    Just sayin what I’d do. If you don’t get it by now, I can’t splain it to you. You do what you want, I’ll do what I want. Have a good day.

    Denis
     
  11. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    FWIW It's not grandpa's horse that she can't really afford to maintain, she bought it to repair and restore for her collection because she likes saving and having these old things. So I am pretty sure she is going to keep the horse for a while at least when the repairs are done. But she can do what she likes of course. She ought to be showing up in less than an hour.

    Jeff
     
  12. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    I have the patterns. They are cast iron.

    They are beefier than I thought from the pictures I was sent.

    20200905_133219.jpg

    They are certainly meant to hold an adult's weight while they climb aboard the carousel. The stirrups were added because of constant problems with riders breaking off pieces of older horses by grabbing (ears) or stepping on the wrong part (hind legs) getting on. First they started sculping the horses with their hind legs tucked in at inconvenient angles to step on, then they started casting the hind legs out of aluminum instead of carving them from wood. It seems in the end the best solution was these stirrups. This lady is definitely a carousel horse fan, no way do I think she is going to turn around and flip it anytime soon. That misunderstanding about the estimate I gave her eaier has been cleared up. And I am glad about that.

    One thing that I didn't catch in the first pictures is that the piece on the right is bent at the waist. The thicker part that surrounds the slot part has a round cross section so I can mold the other part flat and cope down around the slot area when it is molded on a slant. I might make a loose follower piece for it using polymer clay. I've tried that before for some underdogtails and it seemed to work ok in that the sculpy followers can't be blamed for the multiple casting failures. The round hole in this part was drilled, so there's no draft on it.

    20200905_133228.jpg

    I think Melterskelter's prediction about the draft having been ground off the original parts may have come true here on the bottom left of the next pic of the other part. Or maybe not... that end of the part is raised up so the other casting can slide underneath it, so the parting line is irregular in that area already. Maybe I can deal with it without having to build up the corner that looks kinda backdrafty from this angle with putty or something.

    20200905_133259.jpg

    She said I can go ahead and use some putty/filler as needed in order to make them moldable. If I plug up that drilled hole to mold the other pattern, I'll unplug it again afterwards too since the original parts are going back on the horse. But I think what I need to do for this part is to work up a second sculpy follower and get all of this stuff out into the sandbox. That ought to help me wrap my head around it.

    20200905_231216.jpg

    She wants just one set (2 individual parts, or half a horse's worth as it were) cast in bronze and she'll use her originals on the other side of the horse. These parts were originally painted silver and will be again, so who's to know other than her and I and now everyone here that each side of the horse has different metals for their stirrup holders? :D

    Jeff
     
  13. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    Jeff,

    For a one-off rather than build up the one corner lacking draft, I think I would just go ahead and mold it and then use a scribe or tiny screw driver to MAKE a little draft in that corner by pushing sand a bit so that pattern would clear as it is pulled. That surely is not a prescribed practice, but I am pretty sure it would work here. If you extend the corner a skosh in so-doing, who cares? Just file or grind the corner back to a pleasing shape and you are done. Of course, adding a pinch of bondo or bubble gum to the corner would be easy too. But I know I would just push the sand back a bit. Silver paint will hide a multitude of sins! ;-)

    Denis
     
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  14. Petee716

    Petee716 Gold Banner Member

    I'm kind of surprised those 2 yellow screws in the op were enough to take the abuse.
     
  15. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Good idea Denis! I'll try that before sculpting new corners, but I am thinking more and more that it can be molded without either. At least in theory.

    Petee, I didn't receive those screws so I can only assume they also look bigger in person. Or maybe not... could explain why so many of these old horses are missing these parts! ;)

    Jeff
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
  16. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Sculpy went missing so I'm using plaster to make some loose followers. Ram up a drag, cope down, pour plaster.

    But plaster soaks into my greensand. Yuck. Too bad I don't have any petrobond, I bet it would be more waterproof!

    I remembered AvE's "kinetic sand" molding video from a few years ago. He described it as silly putty bonded molding sand. I figured that might do a good job. It sags instead of staying put, but for a small mold like this no worries. I have used the stuff as thin layers of facing sand packed into text etc. for lost foam molds once or twice when worried undercuts might not fill with sand well.

    The stuff will smush around without breaking, so I was able to do a pretty good and low stress job coping down to the parting line in it with a wax carving tool, a spoon, and my fingers. And I only needed to pack a tiny little flask!

    20200906_170255.jpg

    Pulls out pretty clean...

    20200906_165952.jpg

    Poured in some hydrostone plaster (high strength sculptural stuff), waited a cig and a half, then scraped off the excess plaster off the top.

    Capture+_2020-09-06-18-42-06.png

    The pink silly sand brushed off the plaster nice and easy!

    20200906_183851.jpg

    Had to dig a bit around the edges a bit before the plaster got super hard to release the follower, but I got it!

    20200906_183900.jpg

    I haven't tried ramming up a cope side of the cavity the follower creates yet, but I am hopeful it'll help me get a nice clean mold of this thing in greensand easily without too much tweaking. Especially if the final mold takes me a couple tries... I hate coping down in greensand. Now I'll only have had to do it the once, in a friendlier medium. Worked so nice I'll be doing the same for the other part too. :D

    Jeff
     
  17. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    Hmmm, why did you need to make the plaster thingy? Would it not have possible to just put the part on the table convex side up and ram a cope, flip the cope with pattern in the sand, ram the drag, extend the draftless corner (it is not symmetric with the other corner and would benefit from a little lengthening) by carving out a quarter inch or so of sand and draw the pattern piece?

    BTW, I did not previously know about Silly Sand. Cool stuff.

    Denis
     
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  18. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    The other corner is just about the same shape and I've decided it's supposed to be that way after all, and can be molded like that.

    I'm also approaching this optimistically, as though I'm actually going to make more of these someday. The lady has 2 carousel horses already, and as the wise doctor once said, once you get locked into a serious collection the tendency is to push it as far as you can! ;)

    If that ever happens and this works as intended, the parts will be super easy to mold up with minimal to no futzing with the sand. I expect I'll pull a cleaner mold using the followers. Just ram up the patterns in the drag with the followers, flip it, draw out the followers, dust it, and ram up the cope. In theory.

    If not, and I only use them once, one could certainly argue that all I've really gained by doing this is ensuring I only get paid a couple bucks or whatever for my work in the end. I'm well aware of that. But I accept it because I got to experiment with something fun and a little different in my foundry today, instead of spending my weekend wishing I had something like that to do and ending up just covered in cheetos powder and hot glue strands instead. As a hobbyist first and foremost, experiments like this are what I do for fun. Usually I'm the one paying for it. :D

    Jeff
     
  19. Melterskelter

    Melterskelter Gold Banner Member

    I see, Jeff. I guess somehow I did not put together you were make a pattern to hold against possible future requests. That seems like a reasonable possibility. I was sure there had to be a reason to do it that way, but I just didn't get it.

    I agree that doing things just to learn about them and to increase one's general knowledge is a good investment. And sharing it here is also potentially a benefit other members. Those ideas were certainly factors when I tried out Celastic when I repaired the windmill parts a while back. It might have been easier and certainly would have been cheaper to just build up the area with Bondo rather than invest purchasing and then learning about Celastic. But, I am glad I went ahead with the new material. I know it will come in handy in the future and it was just plain fun to learn about it and see how it could do things easier and better than anything I knew about up until that time.

    Thanks for taking us along on this adventure. I am looking forward to the next installment.

    Denis
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
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  20. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Touched up the parting lines on the plaster followers with a little putty. Built a small flask for these parts too, no need for one of my 12X12's for this.

    Then I mulled all my dried out sand and rammed up a quick test flask just to make sure the followers are good...

    Capture+_2020-09-10-20-50-23.png

    Capture+_2020-09-10-20-48-02.png

    Capture+_2020-09-10-20-46-30.png

    Pulled a bit of sand with the inside of one of the parts, I'll have to figure out why and avoid it next time, but my parting lines are perfect!

    On to the next step... Sometime this weekend I hope.

    Jeff
     
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