Hi all. I'm noobtastic

Name's Curtis. I've been casting things now for zero years, unless you count that one time I melted an aluminum can with a weed-killing torch in a piece of black pipe and proceeded to catch a pine tree on fire. Good times.

Total noob. Over the last couple years, casting at home has been an interest of mine. I tend to go to extremes on learning things like this. Any time I decide on something I want to do; remodel a house, customize a classic car, fly a plane - I go deep into it.

My catalyst for finally diving in and starting my voyage in casting things was a very small home remodeling project (installing some hardwood floors) that I successfully turned into a year-long, covid-induced, gutting the house to it's bones, jacking up the house to repair the foundation, and (heck, while I'm at it) adding a fireplace. In this process I harvested two Norway Maples that were dying in order to have the mill make me some really unique hardwood floors, and also had them process a Walnut for the mantle and cabinets to flank the fireplace.

It's just how I roll. I don't do shine-ola.

Long story short, the decor for this last room is primarily English Gentlemen's club/Victorian. The walls on either side of the chase/fireplace will be veneered with sheet copper that I will run through a bead roller and likely patina with vinegar and/or ammonia. I could do a slate hearth for the fireplace, I have decided to instead cast some copper tile that I can patina... thereby turning a 1 day project into an excuse to completely learn a new craft and make the project last infinitely longer than it should. It's the last piece of the fireplace, it's front and center, and why not be able to say I cast it myself from plumbing scraps and that big trash can full of leftover romex and cat5e the neighbor has because he's a xenophobic hoarder?

I did build a furnace with some firebrick and an old iron kettle back at the beginning, but tests showed that it would be great for aluminum, but it only reached about 1800 degrees. My nephew has it now and he enjoys melting scrap aluminum and taking it to the recycling yard for video game money. I figured I had earned a "real" one, so I bought one. It's nothing special, just an Amazon thing, but we're going to try it. Should arrive this week. If I get the bug and want to continue casting stuff, by that point I will likely have the knowledge acquired to build a proper one.

At this point I have probably watched about 30 hours of youtubes on the process, so you can at least use normal vocabulary around me and I should be able to follow, but as far as actually melting metallic things in a crucible, I'm a virgin.

Let's make some cool stuff.

 

Hi Curtis, welcome!, it sounds like the metal casting bug has well and truly hit hard. A working furnace is about half the needed equipment as you'll need to settle on method for making moulds, whether investment, sand casting or various flavours in between. Each method has it's advantages and equipment needed to make it work. This forum has a lot of documented efforts that are a gold mine of experiments of foundry craft and with a bit of a look should save a lot of effort.

 

Welcome Curtis
These guys know their stuff and should shorten your learning curve considerably. Read as: valuable time and money.
Hope you find what you are looking for and good luck.
From a fellow GRMer Fasted58

 

Welcome Curtis,
Leave the cat5 in the garbage can! Romex, yes. Cat5, no. Stripping it would be like milking a mouse- lots of work with very little to show for it. I started in this hobby with just a little project in mind and look at where it's gotten me! I'm all about it!
Post some pictures of your design idea.

Pete

 

Copper walls? I ALMOST just covered the face of my garage door with copper! The thought of another hail storm destroying it made me rethink that one. You're smoking lounge should be safe from hail. Hope you show a photo of it! We live for photos around here. So get to steppin!

You should research cupric nitrate and liver of sulfur for your patina and skip out on the kitchen products. Copper works just like bronze, so check out the artsy fartsy crowd for some tips and techniques.

Welcome!

 

The CAD image is courtesy of a friend on another forum so I can't take credit for them. He included a lot of cabinetry that I won't be doing for right now, and my shelving/cabinetry will all be walnut. He at least nailed the stone and the copper. I also included a couple pictures of the completed maple floor.

 

Stripping Cat5 isn't terrible. Ok, it's terrible, but when you have a barrel full of it and scrap prices suck, it's a worthy passtime while binge-watching something on Netflix.

 

The cheap-o kit I bought from Amazon is a pretty good starter; crucible, plinth, furnace, burner, hose, crucible tongs. I'll need to get the whatchamacallit scraper to pull the junk off the top. I have seemingly been drawn to sand casting, at least as a start. For now I'll build a few wood cope/drag flasks to get started. I'm a very good welder, but until I run 220v to the garage, I won't be welding any time soon.

I have good footwear and protective gear, but I still need an apron and probably better gloves. I will also need to fab or find things like sprues, rams, strike, runners, gates, etc,

 

Yep... for a while I lived in an 1870s house. I'm always amazed at the opulence that was built by hand. The crown molding in that house was 9 pieces, all Walnut. I'm sitting here all pleased with my home-made Maple baseboard which was done with an electric table saw, a cordless router, and installed with a pneumatic nailer by one person in about 2 days. Back in the day they probably had a horse-operated mill, had to cross-cut-fell a tree and limb it with an axe, hand saws in a miter box, and installed it with a hand-crank pre-drill and a hammer. How many fingers were lost in the construction of these houses?

This house is a tiny thing; 835sf 2bd/1ba. This neighborhood cropped up in the 1920s, but this house was actually a chicken coop on a farm and I can't seem to find out when it was originally built. The front bedroom was the original chicken house, then there are three additions to the structure which appear to have been built (guessing by their construction) in the 20s, 50s, and 60s.

The guest bedroom has a plaster wall that was mudded directly over the original cedar shakes that were the on the outside of the chicken coop.

 

That is some seriously pretty flooring. Well done!

 

I grew up in a late 1800s house. It wasn't a fixer-upper, it was a ripper-downer. What a friggin dump. 800 sqft and the roof resembled an old nag's back. We moved in in 1970 and moved out in 1979. The rent was $60 a month and never went up. That should give you an idea. When I was a kid I envied Oliver Douglas. They finally tore it down in the 80s.
End of Dangerfield rant.