Primative no insulation "furnace". My favorite photo of the Mk1 furnace. It was bloody hot work when working close.
Mk2 furnace. This is a big improvement on the Mk1. It has a stainless steel inner sleeve surrounded by sand.
Hot and beautiful.
Pouring Aluminium in cup cake tin. Pouring into new tin was a bad move as the ingots bonded to the tin.
Cup cake ingots still hot in tin.
Hoping heat will drop them out.
Bashing cups out. My 12 cup cake tin ended up being a 6 cup cake tin.
Ingots still in cups.
Grinding through steel cup, I then ripped the steel from the ingot.
Hammer pattern. It's really just another aluminium hammer with the plastic heads removed. I just glued pieces of wood across the holes. I also beefed up the radii between handle and head and filled the grooves along the handle with "bog" ( Bommo that panel beaters use). I then sprayed the thing with automotive primer.
Hammer Pattern in sand.
Just finished pouring hammer.
Out of flask- still warm.
Casting dressed, and pattern. There was a slight shrinkage on one side of the head so I just ground a "waist" all way around. Actually ended up looking good with the waist, looked like it was meant to be there. I now have to machine faces, drill and tap to suit available plastic heads. Unfortunately the heads readily available here are for British made hammers and the thread is 13/16" BSF (12TPI) which is a bit of an oddbod. 13/16" UNC 12 TPI constant pitch series would also do. If I cant get a tap easily I will make one.
Parting 4 inch Ford 302 piston. I parted 8 of these so they would fit into crucible easier.
I then boiled them in automatic dishwashing
solution, fairly strong. about 1/2 hour boil will remove just about all carbon
and grunge.
Boiling pistons in strong automatic dishwashing solution. Works well.
Removing gudgeon pin from Holden piston.
6 Holden pistons in here. I always burn the paint from the inner surface of a can before using it as a mould. Getting rid of the lining on the inside of the can stops bubbling and smoking and burnt scaley crap.
Holden pistons, 6 of them in this "log".
Two steel crucibles and one Plumbago crucible. I use the plumbago one mostly now so I know there isn't extra iron put into the aluminium.
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Monday, May 21, 2001
Tuesday, May 22, 2001