Silicon Bronze Castings

The pc. needs to be 12" long, that's the problem. Everybody has 9" pcs.

 

I do it sometimes when I’m pouring bronze. It can get dicey though for a number of reasons. I face the pattern only with a very thin layer of well-used PB and the rest of the flask with greensand. I carefully separate the cope and drag after casting and throw out the really burnt stuff which ends up being most of the facing sand. The tiny amount of PB that ends up in the greensand layer gets discarded also. I don’t mind a little burnt PB in my greensand heap, but never the other way around. Others may be horrified by this, horrified I tell you, but I find that the benefit outweighs the waste. It keeps my PB heap in better condition, gives the as cast finish I want, and ramming the bulk of the mold in greensand almost completely eliminates dropouts when closing the mold. If I were a more “serious” caster I would invest the time and effort to get appropriate facing greensand, but I’m not.
When I'm casting aluminum plaques I ram the drag (image side) with PB and greensand in the cope.

 

I have a benchtop Neycraft and I think I priced out a replacement muffle once and it was around 300...

Kelly, the elements are buried IN the muffle on mine.

I'd wait and see how many hours they say it takes to stick some sprues to a cup. They weren't the right size anyways. Artsy fartsy foundries usually only deal with thin castings so
they probably don't know the difference.

What about hitting up Chirpy for your part? He understands how to cast thick parts and is a old machinery nut bag. You can find him here or chirpys tinkerings on youtube.

 

Reading this with interest to see how it turns out.

 

Finally after nearly a year later, I got my bronze castings. I made some revisions to my patterns and this time the parts turned out great! I machined one up & all is good now.

 

That looks great Mike! I am glad it worked out in the end. Has it really been a year already since we were all over to Daryl's ?!?

 

Nice looking part. What's it do??

 

Is that the same train man that was on youtube? Short fat guy with the hat sitting on the stool in his shop??

Damn.. I didn't know he died. I liked watching his stuff.

 

It's been a year ago I started working on this project. I believe we went to Daryl's in early May 2023.

 

Steam injector, to keep the water level safe in the boiler. The photo shows the installation.

 

Steam injector