New Pattern in Progress, for Casting an Aluminum Bronze Pipe Hawk

Well, I am pleased. The casting could have come out better, and the next one will. But it'll clean up nicely I think, even if it's going to be more finishing work than I'd hoped.

Glad I didn't try to cast a big pot leaf on the side or anything, as I would have had to grind it back off anyhow. Not everyone wants that anyhow, I'm thinking. Maybe I will play around with removable details like that if I get around to making that match plate for it. I could have done the gating a bit differently to save myself some extra work, but I'm happy enough for this just being a first attempt with this new pattern.

Couple more shots of the progress yesterday:

Got the gating off. Got the bowl-hole drilled out*. Ground out almost all the booger holes (there's still plenty of meat left on the eye after grinding out that biggest pit I showed above ). Test fit the handle; pretty sure I can bang it on a little farther up on the wood when I'm done working on the blade.











Still a lot of work left to do before I'm happy with how it looks, then there's the whole thing about how it isn't sharp yet that I will have to deal with too. But this was more than I usually accomplish out in my shed on the weekends...

Jeff

* Actually the tiny little thick spot behind the eye at the base of the bowl made it easy for me to drill out by shrinking! Not enough to show on the cope, but just enough to form a tiny bubble right where I needed to drill anyhow. You can see it in the 7th pic in my last batch of pix above, right at the deepest part of the bowl core, how convenient!

 

One more to show how the whole casting looks right now a little better:



Still got a bit of work to do there as you can see.

Jeff

Edit - pipe-hawk project resumes here: http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/in...g-aluminum-bronze-c95400.46/page-2#post-10161