Great Ontario Foundry Road Trip, 2025

Last weekend I had a weekend trip booked that was too tempting to not also make a stop in Milton ON to pick up greensand ingredients, and visit a couple of other forum members along my route, namely BldrJ (Josh) and G3j (Doug). I was racing an ice storm, so there wasn't time to stop by and meet Rocco and check in on Bill J, but maybe next time that'll work out somehow.

The old Smelko Foundry Products is gone, Tim Smelko is retired, but John Papaionnou (spelling unsure - it varies from their website to his email address) who is in charge of sales and the sand lab gave me the grand tour of their new facility called Foundry Supply Source. Same products, same people (mostly, I think), and the same hobbyist friendly service.

The new location is still in Milton, but now it's on the other side of hwy 401 in a smaller warehouse (with a trucking company's name on the sign out front).



So a lot of their inventory is on shelves inside transport truck trailers parked semi-permanently (pun intended) at their loading docks. That's where they have all the small items like spoons and slicks, brushes, etc., and more chaplets than I ever expected to see in my lifetime. Crucibles and sands and tools everywhere.







I had to buy my sand as ingredients because their muller has a 1500# minimum capacity per load!



I stayed strong, and the only thing I added to my order while I was there was a better quality face shield for my hard hat. Not the super expensive gold plated one, it's kind of light green and less than half as expensive. But it's supposed to help preserve my eyesight somewhat.

Other than that I picked up #500 of 56 GFN sub-rounded silica (thankfully in 50# boxes not a 500# cardboard barrel), 50# each of western and southern bentonite, 50# of sea coal, and 16# of 75% ferrosilicon, which is a more expensive than sand or bentonite per pound if anyone's wondering.

John showed me all the apparati and instruments in the sand lab, cool stuff I'd only ever read about before. He told me I'm. It alone in that, something like 80% of the commercial foundries he deals with don't own a single piece of sand testing equipment

There's a small press used to make the 2x2 rammed sand samples for testing,





A "400-1" machine that tests those samples' green, dry and shear strengths,



A permmeter, for testing permeability,





drying ovens and furnaces to test losses on ignition,





sand screens,



clay washer,





methylene blue for checking active clay,





and many other things I didn't get good pics or explanations of. Wow! John allowed me to film a little, there will be some video coming up.

Josh and Doug's shop tours will be in separate posts along with some pics of the stuff I bought.

Jeff

 

But then I wouldn't get to agonize over whether or not to add the southern bentonite! (John had told me on the phone they don't put it in iron casting sand because it burns out too easily compared to western, then sent me a recipe that called for a 50/50 mix of bentonites because using only western might make the molds too hard to break out...)

Jeff

 

@Bldr J has a really cool shop.
https://www.joshuafour.com/

It's in an old sock factory and there are some left over oddities like dozens of aluminum legs for ironing socks on.


Not sure how much of his shop itself he wants shared, waiting to hear back, but here are some of his patterns and castings:









Gated that way to avoid any tool marks on the castings...













How cool is this optical pyrometer? Turn the dial to adjust the brightness of a glowing filament in the elongated side of the eyepiece so it matches the brightness seen in the other eye, and the reading on top of the box tells you the temperature.















He also set me up with some scrap steel for tongs building purposes, and an extra pair of aluminized chaps/spats he had.
And a big bucket of citric acid, for which I'm sure I'll find some use eventually. Rust remover? Slowing down plaster or concrete from curing? Who knows.

Thanks again Josh, and let me know if you're ever in my neck of the woods!

Jeff

 

All aboard! Next stop, Sydenham, ON. @G3j is building a 1/8 scale steam locomotive! The National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa has over a thousand engineering drawings for this loco preserved in its collection that he has been able to access. I have a friend who works there and he tells me people do come in wanting to see that kind of thing from time to time, how great that we have such a resource and the drawings didn't all end up just getting burned or something. This one is a 1/8 scale drawing (life sized for Doug) of the whole thing, although I know it's not the best picture.



I think these bronze castings are axle bearings that fit in the open spaces on either side of the locomotive frame.







I don't know the correct name of this assembly, but it has wheels!



Here's an interesting pattern he showed me, and the iron casting. I don't recall what this part is called either. It'll be mentioned in the video, but I do remember Doug musing about how longer names usually belong to smaller parts, ie. The widget is bigger than the widget connector is bigger than the widget connector pin.





This one was really cool too. Rather than build the tricky pattern with its delicate fin/spoke things out of wood, he machined a mold out of homemade machinable wax and cast a fiberglass pattern! Ground a spade bit to the shape of the slots and tilted the workpiece on the mill to get the right shapes cut. Amazing! Anyone remember reading a recipe for machinable wax made of paraffin and polyethylene shopping bags from way back on the old alloyavenue site? A sheet of wax the size he would have needed would have cost $700...









And the machined iron casting he had made. I don't recall if he mentioned which foundry he had cast it.



And some of his own bronze and iron castings. And some patterns. Some are wood, others are 3D printed.











(A core that didn't get used)


Matchplates




Some filters he was given by the owner of Alloy Foundry in Merrickville, which was Canada's oldest operating foundry until a couple years ago.



Doug told me Lake Foundry in Grimsby isn't taking small jobs anymore either. He gave me half a dozen or so of the thin sheet type filters to try out, and said he hadn't figured out how to use any of them yet and isn't sure where to put them in the mold, said they clog up on him. He has had some issues with slag inclusions when casting iron. Perhaps there is a way to trap those in the gating system? Tips would be appreciated. Hoping to start figuring all that out here soon for myself too once I get this new sand made and build the tongs for the A12.

We swapped a couple scoops of my ferrosilicon for a tub of his bentone 34, shiny rocks for magic dirt! Doug managed to get a whole bag of bentone, he detailed how in his K-bond thread. He also gave me a sample of his K-bond sand. Said he made too much, can you imagine? I have some propylene carbonate (oil sand activator) for him next time he's out my way. Thanks again!

Jeff

 

Forgot to take pics of Doug's furnace and oil burner. Interesting though. The furnace has an extra hole near the tuyere where hot air returns into the burner tube to preheat the blower air. I really wish I had taken a longer look at that burner to really figure out what is what and how it works. He also has wood and metal lathes, a mill, etc. several telescopes too including one large one that I believe he and his club actually built the curved mirror and used a homemade wooden micrometer type device he showed me to do so!

Jeff

 

Forgot a couple more pics of train parts. I guess this one is pretty important...





There's a story behind those cast iron liners, but Doug tells it better. Video soon...

It's all got me wondering how OddDuck is doing.

Jeff

 

Yes! After all this time, some kind of meet up really should have already happened already by now.

Here's the video with more detail about the sand lab gear at FSS, Bldr J's optical pyrometer, G3j's patterns and castings, some gossip about foundries in Ontario, etc.

Edit - new link, now with 6 additional newly declassified minutes of @Bldr J 's robots and castings! Thanks Josh. Skip to around 9:30 to get the part you missed if you already checked out the redacted version.



Jeff