I did cheat on the muller construction. I just removed all the blades on a cement mixer and throw a heavy ass pinion gear with gear side down in there...it sits on an angle that holds the gear against the side and it spins while the drum turns. It has to be manually plowed as it gets packed but I can do about 50 to 100 pounds in just a couple of minutes...dump it and add more sand until I get enough to do all my molding. The bathtub makes a good place to divide fresh sand and sand that needs mulling. I raised the mixer to about four feet off the ground so I can put catch under it...turns out another foot higher and one foot to the left and I will be dumping into my mold flask...just have to make a chute to catch spillover nd direct it into the tub.
Lowes has a mixer for 139$. I was going to buy it but already had one so decided to convert the old one.
I did wait for a good sale on the P.Auto mixer and wheels FWIW. I just looked up the same non swivel 8x2 casters that I used on their website, and they have since raised their regular price on them to $44CDN each. HT1's single inflatable tire is looking better and better... Jeff
Did that - the eBay search - found 7 inchers. (8 inch, smooth sided, was more. Almost at the Amazon price, in fact!) Price was lots better - 34$ for a *pair* of the sevens. Ideally, I'd like bigger, though. Just need to keep looking and hope "the right ones" turn up...
They *do* have those at HF. Trouble is, they've got those sorta-shielded semi-precision bearings.... The ones in this wheel already feel like they've gotten a little sand in them, and they've mostly been setting since I got them years ago! It seems the chief attractions of cement mixer mullers is: 1) they can be a cheap(er) way to get a workable muller; (this presumes you have a well-stocked shed, or are good at combing Craigslist / Kijiji with cash-in-hand and a waiting transport vehicle) 2) they (usually) require less fabrication than "make like (Steve) Chastain and build the whole thing from scratch;" and 3) the biggest reason, I suspect, for most: they do not need as precise a level of workmanship to bring to a functional state. (1/16 inch/1.5mm is mostly "good enough", and the tools needed are (relatively) few and (relatively) common, e.g. angle grinder, drill, and welder. You aren't going to need to be tooled like Tom Lipton or Stefan Gotteswinter, nor as skilled as those people - or my mentor, Don Dossey.)
I built my muller using part of a 55 gal. drum. For the wheel, I cut off a ring from a large steel pipe (maybe well casing?) about 3" wide, I think, and cut disks out of 1/8" thick sheet steel and welded them to the pipe ring. I drilled a hole through the center of both disks prior to welding them onto the pipe so I could put a piece of tubing through them and welded that in, so I could run a bolt through it for an axle. being smooth-sided, the wheel doesn't pick up sand, so the axle stays pretty sand-free. I don't lubricate it, but one could put a felt washer on each end of the axle to help keep out sand if it became a problem. The way I see it, it isn't going 50 mph, so the axle will probably never wear out! I set it up so I can lift the entire agitator out of the barrel and scoop out the sand with the scoop shown. It works really well for making/renewing green sand. Mike
