Jumbo Coin Casting/Soule Steam Festival/Ursutz Burner/Bound Sand Molds

Pat could you please take video of porositymaster melting iron at soule and post it on your youtube channel?

 

I will try.
I will have to find somebody to watch my booth for me.

The weather is looking rather iffy on Saturday; 50% chance of rain.

Lets keep our fingers crossed.

 

I'm going to give it a try for Saturday, a friend said he would ride along. Probably won't get there until about 11 or noon. I hope we can make good time.

 

We are at Soule and will be here through Saturday evening after the iron pour.

 

I just found out that they are not having the cupola iron pour at Soule this year.
Sorry about that, they always had them in previous years.

Porositymaster will be pouring iron, using his external oil burner.
I got to watch him test his burner this afternoon, and it is ludicrously simple to start on diesel, and does not require a propane start.
It took him all of 5 seconds to light it.

 

Had a great time at Soule.
Mets some of the fellow casting folks including cae2100, porositymaster, and Jammer.

Jammer gave me some additives and filters; thanks much for that, I appreciate it.

Porositymaster had a number of successful iron pours, and I was able to watch him light his burner, and make several melts.
He really has the iron melt thing down to a science, and can do repeated pours seemingly effortlessly; its no fluke; I watched him do it over two days, and he can melt and pour iron as if it were aluminum, and all using the thoroughly debunked (or so we thought) external burner.

All the things I thought were conventional wisdom about iron melting, porositymaster has debunked, such as using an external burner (very successfully), lighting an external burner in about 5 seconds with complete control, no pulsing, and virtually no adjustment, using the rustiest iron I have ever seen with complete impunity, very fast melt times, a very hot and fluid pour, using diesel only which seems to burn as hot or hotter than any waste oil I have seen, very small amount of combustion air, very small clearance around the crucible, etc. Much of it sort of defies logic, or at least my logic anyway.
Its time to rewrite the "Iron-melting With Oil" book.

Just when I think I know a lot about casting and oil burners, someone like porositymaster comes along and shows me how little I really know.
It seems like the more I learn, the less I know. Such is life I guess.

Anyway it was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.
I did not get very many photos as I was busy working the booth most of the time, but I did get a few iron videos, which I will try to post.

In the photo below, from left to right, Jammer, porositymaster, porositymater's molding volunteer, PatJ, Chirpy (cae2100).

 

I forgot to take photos of what porositymaster was casting, but I think cae2100 has some photos (a small steam engine with "Soule" in letters beneath it).

Here is a photo of my display, and also a couple of photos of a huge sprocket pattern that was hanging on the wall. I would like to see the chain that went around that.

I think I had 21 engines on display. Boy those things seem to get heavier every day.
The heaviest one is 70 lbs.

 

Fun time, I've never seen so much steam in my life. Soule has a great set-up with the big steam generator running most of the steam engines on display. Then the one guy had steam engines that looked like cigarette lighters, they were tiny. They ran on little alcohol burners.
I have to resize my pictures for the forum.

Is this going to be the official thread for the Steam Show?

 

No I would leave it jumbo coin casting, since that is what someone would look for if they are trying to cast something like a large coin.

The rest is just fluff.

 

Pat, cae2100, what would you think about sending all our videos to one person to edit into one video? I got a couple shorts of Porositymaster.. unfortunately mostly of his back side . I'm not good at editing, anyone want to volunteer?
Pat has the show pretty well covered with all his pictures he has here. My wife has dubbed us "The Motley Crew".

 

I just post stuff when I think it may be interesting to others, although it may be a bit random.
If someone wants to find Soule, they can do a search; but the thread is about coin casting.
You can break it out to clean things up, no problem, I am good with whatever.

I posted a video of porositymaster's iron pour and burner below (video by chirpy).

In the photo, from left to right, Jammer, porositymaster, porositymater's molding volunteer, PatJ, Chirpy (cae2100).

See 14:50 and 37:25.

 

I won't have time to edit videos, but I think cae2100 is going to edit his, and he may want to edit some others.

"The Motley Crew" is a good description, but as we get older and face health challenges, I think more in terms of "The Still Alive Crew".
Sometimes I feel like that guy in the Monty Python movie that they keep trying to throw on the wagon, and he keeps insisting "I'm getting better".

 

That's a good video Pat. Shows him lighting up. I just got his first pour and the shakeout.

 

Porositymaster puts on a good iron pour show.
Boy does he know how to make iron melts look easy (don't be fooled).

I think the technical name for that burner is the "Ursutz" burner?, patented in 1945.
Not sure how you pronounce that name.
I found this patent on the burner, or what looks a lot like the burner, but with the oil entering the input tube, not the combustion chamber.

There was a similar burner featured in a magazine, perhaps Popular Mechanics? in the 1950's I think.
They do work if you know how to do it.
A refractory burner may hold up better than a steel one, but maybe not.
That output tube gets extremely hot (almost white hot).

 

Here's the pictures I had of the tiny engines. I should have put a coin down for size, but you can see the fellows hand in the one picture. Also a pattern I would like to
borrow, it's about a 2 foot long cannon.

 

Here are some Soule videos that cae2100 took last weekend.

From Friday:




And from Saturday: