new member

Haha, this time none of it is inside the house. She is very understanding but I know my limits.

I'll get it all set up in time, but yeah, it is going to be a lot of work over a few years before I can really use the big furnace.

Step 1, put away the greensand, at least for the winter when it will be useless anyhow, and see if the red french sand works better. The bottom half of the 3 100# bags of oil sand were hard as a rock, too solid for the muller to break up! So I spent hours squishing it through a riddle. It all came right back to life!



The 2 little plastic barrels are full too.

PS. Just heard back from Tim Smelko: "french sand" is indeed a synonym for Petrobond. TIL

Jeff

 

I finally got an external dvd drive for my PC, so I was able to convert my copies of 2 VHS-era lost wax bronze casting documentaries showing Bill's process & equipment in action from discs to youtube. Bill tells me one of them was chosen for entry in a national student film competition of some sort.

When I was at Bill's foundry picking up all the gear, he mentioned that permission for the videos to be shared freely was given, but I'm only 95% sure he meant both videos, and far less sure how youtube might interpret these things... So I played it halfway safe and set them to Unlisted and made sure to give credit in the descriptions since they are not my own work. Not a lawyer.

PM me if you want the links, or I will happily post them here if the Powers That Be convince me it won't cause the site any trouble!

Someone recently asked how it was going setting up all the new gear. So since I'm here in Bill's thread again, setting up the big furnace and all the rest of it is a longer term plan, to be done in increments as time, space, and budget permits. A setup like Bill's would be ideal. But it's going to have to happen in small steps, as I don't have a crane to move the #70 crucibles with or a building big enough to set it all up in yet. And definitely not the budget to pay for all that at once. Even the propane burner alone takes up a lot of space. But by taking it on in baby steps, maybe I can start playing with it a bit sooner - there's always my oversized Moya burner and the 2-man manual tongs & shank that came with it, right?

I'll post over in my own foundry shed thread about any significant foundry upgrades I'll be making toward the end of setting up all this equipment as they happen. So far I've got the petrobond put into service and the big stack of dense firebricks is now doubling as a pouring deck for sand molds. Plus recently I put up a new 6x8 toolshed to store my mower, generator, snowblower, barrels of charcoal, greensand, and sil-bond, etc., in. This gave me back some room to move around Gollum and all of the other ludo processing gear, so I can once again access the sanders and other tools in my patternmaking/storage shed. Moving the greensand barrel out of the casting shed also cleared up some much needed space in there - the PB can stay in the molding bench without drying out overnight... It sure was not much fun working on my own putting in SO many too-tiny-to-use-with-gloves-on sheet metal screws in an Ottawa January, but I'm sure glad it's done. But I would advise anyone putting up one of those Home Depot shed kits to do it in the SUMMER instead if at all possible.

Jeff