Shed conversion for casting

Discussion in 'Foundry tools and flasks' started by Tobho Mott, Oct 31, 2019.

  1. Al Puddle

    Al Puddle Silver

    Not to belabor the point but a CO meter will tell you the levels where you hold the meter. A detector will only scream at you if the CO levels are high over there where it is.
    It's safer to stand 6ft. behind an idling motorcycle rather than near the doorway; the meter tells the truth.
     
  2. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Thanks for clarifying that, some points probably should be belabored...

    FWIW, some of the ones online seem to be labelled as monitors rather than meters, but they seem to be the same thing based on their descriptions. Someone please correct me if I have that wrong...

    Jeff
     
  3. Al Puddle

    Al Puddle Silver

    I'm using the PYLE PCMM05 carbon monoxide meter. It had an alarm that went off at 30ppm until I put glue on the skwaker.
    The readout is pretty responsive. Exhaling cigarette smoke shows 4ppm within a couple of seconds. I can walk around with it in my hands.
    The detectors I've had just make noise. They don't tell you if the levels are going up or down. I've experienced a 50% failure rate thus far.
    I think monitors are the same as detectors, maybe they show levels.

    I'm finding myself pretty hyper about CO in shops. Could be a cause of dementia. Soap Box thread to follow (some day).
     
  4. Peedee

    Peedee Silver

    I've had CO posoning and it isn't pleasant! (Car exhaust filled the car, an accident pushed the boot floor over the exhaust but I carried on driving it without realising) I was very lucky to just be ill for week.
     
  5. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    The "monitors" I've looked into do display the CO level, but one or two of them mention they respond to changes in the level within "< 60 seconds". Presumably that is pretty slow. Others don't mention how often they update their display. "Within a couple of seconds" sounds a lot better to me... I'm still on the lookout for a good one that's hopefully not too pricey.

    Aside from that for a moment, I got the muller moved in (I may have already mentioned that) and also built the new stand for the molding bench. The stand is basically a table for the bench to stand on, with room to store 5 or 6 5-gallon buckets underneath. Moved my greensand storage barrel to its new home on the right side of the pic too, after I found a new spot for the old Gingery charcoal furnace.

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    I took the charcoal furnace off the old hand truck it has been living on for the past 6 years, stuck it on a base of loose red clay bricks, and covered it up with the top 2/3 of the 54 gallon drum I used the rest of as the water bath bucket that goes under my stack melter. That ought to keep it out of the rain and snow just as well as sitting in the corner of my shed taking up valuable real estate...

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    This means I now have that cart handy again too. The tires went flat on me sitting there so long, but I'll just put inner tubes in them, then the newly freed up cart should be really handy for moving that sand barrel around as needed.

    Still need to find a space for a bunch of short 2X10's, but aside from that and the CO metering gear, the place is just about set up how I want it now!

    I have a microwave oven timer I salvaged a year or so ago that I need to wire up to a plug so it can be used with the muller, Ironsides-style. Except that Canadian microwave ovens have the CSA to satisfy, so there were a ton of superfluous safety circuits and extra wires and components than in Ironsides' video, presumably to keep Canadians from hurting themselves with electricity while they're bored and cooped up all winter with nothing better to do than find more exciting pastimes than licking 9v batteries. It took some doing to figure out which wires to keep and which to lose, and I wound up with a bunch of spare fidget clicker switches to play with. I keep one in my jacket pocket, and now and then when I'm bored outside in the vaping section, someone ends up asking me, "What is that sound? Why is your pocket going clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick?!

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    I'm usually surprised to learn it's me, just fidgeting, without even being aware of it.

    But I think it will work...

    Jeff
     
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  6. Petee716

    Petee716 Gold Banner Member

    You're a man after my own heart Jeff. My 2crucible furnaces live outside under drums and they do just fine. I'm glad you had the foresight to make your table high enough for the buckets to fit under, unless it was just lucky. In either case I'd call it a win. Perhaps a modest rack made up of 2x2s hanging from a couple rafters will work for your lumber storage. Use drywall screws into the rafters so it'll be easy to take down.
    I carried a microswitch in my jacket pocket for a couple of years. Not really on purpose, it just happened to be there waiting for me to click it. I've always got some kind of junk in my pockets. Lol. For what it's worth I never thought I'd see the day when people would be smoking weed in public. Maybe that explains the people licking 9V batteries and your government feeling the need to protect them.lol

    Pete
     
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  7. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Haha, you may be on to something there.

    I think I probably got the idea from you at some point actually... Keeping the furnace outside under a barrel, I mean. I came up with the battery thing on my own, when I was a kid. o_O

    I have a spot for the boards I want to move, I just need time to get back out there and move them...

    Jeff
     
  8. Jason

    Jason Gold

    A FEW WEEKS????? :eek::eek::eek::eek: After 3 days, fish and relatives start to stink!;)
     
  9. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Castings from my new all-weather foundry, before Christmas!

    My parents are here and my sister arrives today with her daughters. One of them is 5 and REALLY into unicorns. So I grabbed a cheap plastic mold from an arts and crafts store at the mall while gift shopping and made some hydrostone plaster patterns...

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    It popped up above freezing for a couple days, but my sand hadn't heated up enough yet, the water just turned into little sandy ice balls in the muller... Easy enough to remedy that with a little weed burner action for a minute or so while the muller was running.

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    I had to make a new ingot mold flask to fit a new ingot mold match plate (aka upside down baking pan)...

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    ...because I brazed a copper ingot into the old match plate by using it upside down this summer during the argon condenser casting session at Van's Blacksmithing. The experience was well worth having to buy a new thrift store baking pan.

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    The unicorn mold, ready to pour.

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    We recently replaced our coffee table: gotta love new foundry furniture, now I have sort of a pouring deck I can set a couple molds on! And keep a few buckets under.

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    Put a handle on my new dollar store dross scoop too.

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    Lighting the furnace for the first time with everything all set up inside:

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    Starting to melt...

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    First pour in the new foundry:

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    Unicorns! I messed up the pegacorn's face cutting the surge trap, so I knew he wasn't going to turn out, but I got 5 good ones.

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    I think she will like them. Only a little cleanup left to do; it should be no problem to have them ready on time.

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    Hoping there will be a wearable PPE CO meter under the tree for me in a couple days (I dropped enough hints, will see if she picked them up or not), but I figure having survived this is a pretty good sign as to how well the big fan works to push the bad air out. I'll be melting and pouring in luxury from now on guys!

    Have a merry Christmas/happy holidays and a happy and safe New Year everyone!

    Jeff
     
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  10. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Merry Christmas Jeff. You are one of the few guys here that can actually say they have a proper foundry. The rest of us just piss about in our driveways and backyard. :oops::D Good job man!
     
  11. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Thanks Jason. That may be so, but I'm definitely still just pissing about too. I'm just doing it out of the weather now, is all! :D

    Jeff
     
  12. Patrick-C

    Patrick-C Silver

    Nice sand, where did you get it?
    Thanks, Patrick
     
  13. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    TLDR: Smelko Foundry Products Ltd. in Milton, ON.

    I used a bit of the sand I picked up at Smelko several years ago for facing, with my own homemade sand backing it up. The Smelko sand was made for a friend of mine who did a one day one time only aluminum casting session with a couple guys from this men's club he's in, which he swears isn't a cult; I drove out to one of the guys' place with a small charcoal furnace and some gear to show them how to make a small mold and help them melt and pour the aluminum. It was a super densely populated suburban row house tiny backyard, and the guy who lives there wound up calling at the last minute to say he had to leave, but to go ahead with it anyway. Super sketchy! But not one person from any of the half a dozen homes with line of sight and practically within arm's reach of the place even looked twice at the three strange men tarping over their absent neighbour's backyard to keep the rain off and proceeding to virtually destroy his small garden setting up and operating a pop-up a aluminum foundry! I'm amazed the fire department AND cops didn't show up. They got their castings, and I got gas money for a road trip to spend the weekend with an old friend and a hundred pounds of amazing sand. Point being, Smelko's used one of their sand recipes designed for aluminum casting when they made it. The stuff is awesome, great for bronze too. Once I built my muller, I tried to figure out Smelko's recipe as best I could in order to make sand that performs the same, but I didn't manage to replicate their Grain Fineness Number (somewhere in the 115-130 range. Best I found was "75 mesh". Could have got "140 mesh" but I chickened out, thinking maybe that's more into Petrobond territory. Anyone know?) And I'm still tweaking the clay content, adding small doses of calcium bentonite. It's still in the lower half of the percentage range Tim Smelko told me the theirs has in it, and still getting better. I think Smelko's has a bit of wood flour in it too, from talking to another member here who bought sand ingredients from Tim. (Where the heck has J. Vibert got to anyway?) I added a bit of dextrin to mine which seemed to give it similar stickiness for a while, but it seemed to get burned out of the sand pretty fast, while my Smelko sand has always remained really nice and sticky. Maybe mine will get there with a little more clay, I can bump it up a few percent more before it's definitely got more than they use. I think Smelko's has a bit of sea coal too - it doesn't stick to my bronze castings at all, but my homemade sand did until I added seal coal.

    Jeff
     
  14. Al Puddle

    Al Puddle Silver

    Well done!
     
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  15. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Thanks Al Puddle, and merry Christmas!

    Jeff
     
  16. Al2O3

    Al2O3 Administrator Staff Member Banner Member

    You're casting in luxury now Jeff. With the fan moving a fair bit of air, did the furnace warm it up inside a bit?

    Best,
    Kelly
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2019
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  17. Jason

    Jason Gold

    It probably melted the snow within a 20ft radius of that building! :p
     
  18. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    There was only a little snow left, and most of that had just melted that day and the day before when it warmed up a couple degrees above freezing. We didn't get a white Christmas, just green grass covered with dead leaves, and a lot of frozen puddles on the road now that it's dipped back down just below freezing. I think I'll put a thermometer in the shed, you guys have got me curious - it was already pretty nice out, so if it warmed up a little, I can't say I noticed it at all. I didn't expect to, really. There's no insulation, I had all 3 doors open, and the furnace was only running for probably a little less than 15 minutes, and with that fan running, it gets pretty breezy in there. I actually think if it had been really cold out, it would add some wind chill factor more than it would warm the place up. Hopefully I'll be able to confirm or deny that as we move into January and February, when the really cold weather comes.

    I really was preoccupied with the contents of the air more than its temperature, since my CO meter hasn't arrived yet. I can't know for sure how safe my setup really is, or whether the "fume hood" I cobbled together is helping, hurting or having no effect at all until it does show up. Or if I keel over first, I guess... But my suspicion is that I'm fine, running just my hair dryer for forced air with around 5psi propane at least, and that my fume hood is more likely to cause me a head injury when I go to peek into the furnace than it is to save me from poisoning myself... But it's still on my mind, so that meter will be really nice to have.

    I was messaging back and forth with Clarke Easterling from Windy Hill Foundry a little bit about our indoor setups, and he told me he used to have to stop after 2 iron melts using an oil burner in his foundry because CO would start to affect him. :eek: But that now he sets up a bouncy castle blower at eye level aimed the back of his head from about 5 feet back, ensuring he always has fresh air being scooped into his face shield. That is how he is able to keep working all day there when he has a big project like the Keith Rucker straight edges he's now working hard to finish up.

    Jeff
     
  19. OMM

    OMM Silver

    A overhead hood captures a good deal of the fumes, And they are a must.

    Ideally, you want to collect as many fumes as you can, at the source with a high temperature unit. Sometimes on a flexible or moveable arm.

    If you’re trying to control heat as well, sometimes you need to bring in make up air close to the byproduct or just slightly before.

    Sorry about my quick crappy drawing.
    But let’s just say you had a 48 inch hood that drew about 2000 CFM. And a source capture of 3-500 CFM you would probably capture 99% of the fumes.

    Free return air being close to the furnace would also cut down on the heating and streamline the fumes. It is always better to have a building a little at negative pressure when trying to evacuate contaminated air.

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    Last edited: Dec 25, 2019
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  20. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Thanks!

    Anyone ever heard of a blow pipe exhaust system? I put up a video of the new foundry setup the other day and a commenter suggested I look into it, but my searches are only finding poison dart launching pea shooters!



    Jeff
     
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