Pattern Making for the Mechanically Challenged

In preparation for casting these coins, I've restarted my furnace build. The whole thread is on the other forum: http://www.alloyavenue.com/vb/showthread.php?13774-Kaowool-Propane-Furnace-Build

Figure I'll post this here since this site is more active.

I did a firing of the first coat of satanite tonight, to cure it. The swirl on the flame looks incredible!

What color should the satanite be when it's finished curing? I've still got a bit of a rainbow going. It's turning brownish near the burner, the original grey in other places, and closer to black along the top edge.

I also had a bit of an... incident... when trying to relight the furnace while it was still warm, but apparently not hot enough to ignite the propane right away. Had a bit of a boom, and now there's several big cracks in the side.

I'll just paint over that on the next coat and no one will be the wiser......
Except you guys and the rest of the internet.


By the way, how do you post photos in-line that aren't at a URL?
EDIT: Fixed it. Thanks David!

 

Hm that's what I did, but it shows up as an attachment and not a big image like yours.

So is there anything else I should do before applying the next coat of satanite? Or does it look good?

 

This may sound simple to some, but I find 25%ish struggle. A step by step with picture and cursor orientation might be helpful. I personally did not struggle with the software with one or two tries. But, in my opinion there should be a sticky how to upload pictures and cursor place them. (I don’t wanna step out of line, so sorry David) it took me a few tries and edits with picture placement. Xenforo has very similar characteristics to Vbulletin. Picture quality is sometimes lost here maybe do to compression or Storage reasons or restrictions.

But, purposeful placement is pretty easy. Maybe in one of the moderators can give a sticky demonstration.

 

Slap some more satanite over the cracks. It will be ok!!
Once it's fired it should be whiteish.

 

I hope you kept your eyebrows. CBB's right. There's no moving parts in there. The cracks won't matter a bit.

 

Luckily, I caught all the fun on camera.


Backstory: I had just ran the furnace to dull red heat, and the inside was still glowing. Normally, I restart the fire by dropping in a small ball of paper towel and lighting that with a BBQ lighter. But this time I figured it was still hot enough to reignite on its own. I sure won't be doing that again.

I'll be applying the second coat of satanite tomorrow afternoon or this weekend. The first one was quite thin, but I'll try to build up some thickness with these next few. Any tricks to curing the part on top of the wool, that isn't inside the bore?

 

Wow!

Yeah here's my usual procedure for startup:


I was slow on opening the air intake because I wanted to be gentle when curing the satanite. Once the flame is good to go I put on the lid. For the boom, I decided to do the restart completely differently. What could go wrong, right?

 

I put the second coat on the lid tonight, and left it under a floodlight to speed up drying. That worked super well, and it will be ready for firing tomorrow. I also bought a weed burner to cure the mating surfaces, and having never used one before I have to say holy crap lol I don't know what kind of weeds this is meant for, but I was not expecting the torrent of flame that comes out of these things.

How's the printing going?

 

No reason to wait. Paint, fire and repeat. Better to build up layers than all at once.

 

Sorry you have to work extra right up until the holiday. Making you work for your break!

 

That would have to be one incredible casting challenge. if it was (sure its not) almost have to be wax, right?

 

Second coat is on. This time I fired it just with the weed burner, until most of it was at red heat. How's the color look? Cured enough?

 

The bore was definitely at red heat. The top mating surface and the lid were only there briefly, but the color looks pretty uniform. I think the lid may be done at 2 coats; I might do a 3rd if I need to build up some more thickness. The plan for the body is 4 coats.