Casting iron for profit.

I have always enjoyed the video made by the lodge foundry making cast iron frying pans. It goes into great detail on how they are made. At one point they mention how many thousand castings they make per hour.

So I thought why would I want to make cast iron frying pans when lodge can do it so well? Then I saw this amazing video on youtube about this guy pouring cast iron frying pans with a high mass crucible furnace with a siphon nozzle burner burning peanut oil.

What makes this video a stark contrast with the lodge video is that he makes nine frying pans per day! This video is all about handmade/crafted pans to sell to wealthy buyers. He sells them for $280 each so he would make $2520 per day. Each week he would make $15,120 and by the end of one year it would be a grand total of $786,240. This would have to be a great example doing really well with a homemade furnace.

I wonder where he got the info to build his furnace and to cast iron so successfully, I don’t think I have seen him on any forum. He is what I call a quiet achiever not relying on anyone.

 

That's really great!, good for them... I hope to do something similar too. The design with integral handle makes it a lot easier to make although dropping it could break the handles off. Exposure on a show like that has got to have some effect on sales. he looks to be using fine silica sand with either resin or sodium silicate with a graphite and alcohol spray and a quick flame off of the alcohol. I'm surprised to see him lift that A20 full of iron with those style lifters, that would require some strength to do.

 

Mark, It is good to see that you enjoyed the video, I certainly did. Were you thinking of casting something unusual in iron that would sell in large numbers or go for low volume high price?

 

My foundry friend makes these gemstone faceting machines, they have eleven aluminium castings in them and sell for AUD $3300. He can't make them fast enough for the demand, they have even been spotted in Taiwan factories being reverse engineered but the Taiwanese can't make them cheaper when using bar and plate stock to cnc machine them. I plan to make an entirely different product but similar construction and materials to sell for a similar price.

 

280bucks for a frying pan??? hmmmm
I gotta be honest however, I didn't watch as I think bourdain is a first class asshole.

 

I enjoyed that video. It is interesting to see someone casting pans for sale out of brake rotors.


One thing though: no food or open containers in the work area!

 

When he talks too much on the video I just press the mute button!

 

I enjoyed that video. Thanks for posting it.

At home I face an eternal struggle with trying to get my wife engaged in my "hobbies". Maybe I should make her a skillet...? A frying pan for mother's day perhaps...?...lol

 

My wife was given a rolling pin and a 12" Lodge skillet as a wedding gift - from her mother and aunts. We already had a 12" skillet though so I wonder why they'd give her another? Hmm...

 

Sounds like a lot of money, but running a business is crazy with rent, taxes, phone, internet, insurance, utilities, licenses and registrations, shipping, packaging, handling, marketing, not to mention the cost of equipment.
Sometimes when it seems like you are getting rich becomes minimum wage (or less) once you do the math and pay all the bills (been there, done that).
I would not consider doing it for less than 200/hr., but it would probably need to be a lot higher than that depending on how much space you were renting.

 

For a "hand made" piece of American ingenuity...? He could probably get more.

High end / novelty cookware carries a massive margin. Case in point... if this frying pan was aimed toward the joe six pack market, something like it being made for old brake rotors would kill the business. For millennial hipsters it's a small price to pay to have another example of how you're saving the planet so you can brag about it to your buddies while sipping spritzers.

On a different note. What level of slag can you expect from melting down brake rotors...? There must be a ton of prep work to remove rust...? Do you bother with vented rotors..?

 

Porositymaster has melted the dirtiest iron with very thick rust, and the poured metal comes out perfect every time.
He just skims off the slag as it rises to the top, and it is not really an excessive amount of slag in my opinion.
I would not have believed such rusty metal could be used unless I saw it first hand.
Cleaning iron before using it is a myth; it is not necessary.
I am not aware of any metallurgical issues from using dirty metal, and you can bet that Lodge and the other big boys don't clean their iron either.

Brake rotors do tend to have a heavy coat of asbestos dust on them (I assume brake pads still contain asbestos).
That would be considered a hazardous material, and the cleaning and disposal cost of that material (no matter how small the quantity) could make the whole operation financially impractical.

 

Brake rotors can generate a lot of slag but I don't bother to clean them because it is too much work. Older brake pads had asbestos, newer pads are supposed to be asbestos free.

 

From a legal standpoint, making a cooking utensil from brake parts that may or may not have had contact with asbestos is corporate suicide! Even if 100% harmless certified by the best labs on earth, a judge and jury would have a field day on our cast iron pot maker. Words that come to mind are irresponsible and wreckless endangerment. It take just one cancer case thats not even related to this cookware and the knowledge we posses here in this very thread and it's seriously game over.

 

When did asbestos stop being used in cars in the USA?.

 

Should have been years ago. However, I would not be surprised to find the material hasn't been fully removed. Who knows, it might even be manufactured for specific applications. I still see some high temp aircraft parts and applications containing asbestos still in everyday use. If its intact and not degrading, it's fine left alone.

 

This is an interesting page... https://www.freedoniagroup.com/Cont...s-What-the-Average-Consumer-Might-Not-Realize

 

There is now a comprehensive import ban in Australia with the onus of proof on the importer: vintage cars now either require testing otherwise the motor, clutch and brake calipers have to be removed before import. The fines are pretty high for individuals and companies alike, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even the testing is in the tens of thousands of dollars apparently. There is some coverage on Youtube of some guys who imported a Nissan 240Z from Japan into Australia, it was easier to leave the engine, clutch and brakes behind.

I would have thought remelting calipers (Edit: rotors) would remove any asbestos in the slag, then any possible surface contamination would be removed by their aluminium oxide blasting of the skillets. Recently talcum was found to be linked to cervical cancer, the fibres of mineral talc are similar to asbestos and some talc has a naturally occurring asbestos content anyway.

 

Ha... look at how backward we are in Canada. Asbestos still going strong...

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/...lly-banned-in-canada-not-until-2018-1.3896765