foundry – Twisted and Delusional

Random stuff…

I have a little bit of time so I thought I would post some random things.

First off, most of you know that I have been growing my coffee plants for around 5 years. I have only had blossoms on them twice and earlier this year was the one of them. I was really happy to see blossoms, since its a good indicator that I’ve finally gotten close to making them happy. I was watering them a couple days ago and almost didn’t notice these…

Those are coffee beans! The very first time in years of growing I have had coffee beans! They are hard to notice because they really blend in with plant. As proof, see how many beans you can count in the next photo..

Hint: there are 5 beans in that photo, but I bet you counted 3. I’ll post more pics if they get to the ripe phase and turn red. Overall, I’m just happy to see any beans, ripe or not.

Switching gears…… Some of you know I enjoy making small engines and I have met many wonderful people going to miniature engine meets and forums. One of the great men I got to meet was Bruce Satra. He revived a model engine from the 1940’s called the Morton M5. The Morton model engine is actually based on the LeBlond engines in the previous post. Here is a pic of the Morton Bruce built in the ’80’s.

I started a Satra M5 from castings that Bruce sold several years back, but I didn’t buy a complete kit, just a few to get me started. When I ran into a couple machining questions I emailed Bruce and he was always super helpful. Unfortunately Bruce passed away several years ago and many of us were left without parts. A friend of Bruce, whom I will not name but is an easy Goggle search to find, was supposed to keep the Satra Morton M5 going in memory of Bruce. Alas, he has completely dropped the ball, even going so far as not keeping VernalEngineering.com (Bruce’s M5 webpage) running. Here is a pic of the fantastic castings Bruce used to sell…

So, left without a source of parts after several attempts over several years to contact Mike (oops, wasn’t going to name drop) I am left with my usual answer. I will make my own castings based on Bruce’s notes and conversations we had. (As if some of you out there couldn’t guess I was going to say that)

I’ve started the process and here is a little info on progress. I started by modeling the parts in CAD software and then printing out the parts to verify dimensional accuracy…

Those quick and rough prints checked out, so now I am making my wax molds. I’m a couple revisions in on the rod and piston molds, and have found a wax suitable to injecting into the small lines and cavities. Now I am just refining the molds to help with the last small imperfections in the wax parts. I’ll post more pics and info when I have some final wax parts before attempting the first metal castings.

Manly Arts?

Sometimes I just cant get things outta my head. I saw a blog the other day touting the ‘Manly Arts’ and just had to shake my head in wonder. Listed posts under manly arts were things like ‘how to build a campfire, ‘beard oils’, ‘mustache taming’, ‘car camping’, and my favorite (yes, that is sarcasm) – ‘what men complained about women 50 and 100 years ago’. W….. T….. F….. ?

I was thinking about this as I fired up the forge and collected the materials and tools to start melting old lead weights and scrap into usable ingots. In case no one out there has melted scrap down into ingots, there is actually a lot of time to contemplate life and its mysteries as you go about it. The only time you really need to pay attention is when there is hot liquid metal present and ready to splash everywhere it can and solidify. Thus plenty of time to let your mind wander….

So, what all is needed to melt lead down you ask? Does it require the insane amount of heat that aluminum and brass do? Nope, lead is easy, any campfire has enough heat to melt lead. Does it mean that we don’t respect it when you have hot liquid metal sloshing around? Nope, it will still F your sh*t up if it gets on you or something you dont want damaged, thats all the warning your going to get. Here’s a pic of my lead smelting set up.

Pretty simple really, something to hold the charcoal, a cast iron melting pot, and the charcoal to heat it up. I do use the blower on occasion when melting lead just to ramp the heat up for melting larger pieces quicker, but it isn’t a necessity. I throw a couple pieces of lead in the pot when I get the coals lit so I can see when I get to melt temp. As the lead melts and makes a nice puddle in the bottom it gets easier to melt lead that is added since you have a nice big thermal source immersing the new scrap. Almost all scrap lead, like old tire weights, have a bunch of dirt and junk on them not to mention the steel weight clips. Most of that stuff will float to the top so you can scrape it off, which you want to do. I lose a little lead with the crap, but in the scheme of things it’s better to have clean lead than try to save every last gram.

Enlarge the picture and you will see the weight clips and dirt floating on top the lead. I use a small casting ladle I have had for years to scrape the scrum off. I usually just tap all that junk out of the ladle onto the ground then sweep it up and discard it once I’m done with the melt and everything is cooled. Get enough lead melted and the top cleared of junk and you will have something that looks similar to this.

Here comes the fun part, and since I work solo I couldnt take any action shots. Lol. Pouring requires holding that little wire bail in the picture above and using the tab opposite the spout on the pot to tip and pour the lead. Having an aversion to serious pain (I know, not very manly, but I don’t have my beard oil on. In? What is the proper way of wearing beard oil?) I have made a small tool to hook the bail wire and lift the pot that keeps my hand away from it’s contents and I use a pair of pliers to grip the tab for tipping. Oh, and I wear a big ole pair of welders gloves for good measure.

Mmmmm, lead muffins. Seriously, this old cast iron muffin pan makes a heck of a mold for pouring all kinds of ingots. Just don’t use it to bake with or you may have elevated metal levels in your blood. Lol. There is no need for a release agent in the mold as the metal contracts once its cooled sufficiently and falls right out. You can see the gap around the cooled ingots in the pic above.

A couple hours of work turned half a 5 gallon bucket of scrap into the ingots above and it was done before the clock struck noon. I bet a few of you are thinking to yourself ‘Why does he have thick ingots and thin ingots?’ Well kiddos, put on your thinking caps and leave your ideas in the comment section. First one to come up with the reason I do it will get a little of the finished product in the picture sent to them.

One final thing. I did the above work with an untamed mustache, no beard oil, and without complaining about women 50 or 100 years ago. After all, I have enough complaints about women without having to go back in history……. LMAO!

Hammer Time…

Just for the record this post has nothing to do with MC anybody. 😉

Sunday morning was under 80 degrees, so it was tolerable to fire up the forge and play a bit with some hot metal. And of course since I’m twisted, my metal needs to be twisted too. Lol. First things first, I had to make a simple boring handle for heavy steel crucible I made to use in the aluminum melter mentioned in a previous post. Time to get the coals hot and ready.

Lets see…. Forge full of coals, hammer, water bucket, more charcoal, and a big piece of metal heating in the forge. We are all set. And to save you the boredom of a simple piece I will fast forward to heating the metal for something more interesting, a slender version of an ‘S’ hook.

For this post I’m going to show you some of the steps to make one of these hooks. A few cranks on the forge blower brings the coals to a bright yellow, almost white, heat and gets the metal to be worked temperature up to speed. Lets get the hot metal over to the anvil and start tapering the end to a point.

The metal has cooled to a cherry red while I try to take a picture, but even at this temp its still workable. I hammer the end, drawing it out to a point and trying to keep the taper consistent and concentric. Once I have the taper to the point I want (no pun intended) I place the very end over the back of the anvil and start scrolling the end by moving a little more rod over the edge and hammering it over. I heat and re-heat the rod as necessary to keep the metal workable.

Once I have the end curled, or scrolled, the way I want it I heat the rod and use a cold chisel to cut the overall length of hook off from the rest of the rod. Then its time to start scolling the other end. Once again it all starts with tapering the metal down to match the other end. A taper in progress looks like this.

Keep adding heat and hammer work and you will end up with a double scroll, one on each end facing each other. Once I’ve got both the scrolls roughed in I go back and try to make them symmetrical, even in curvature and point and laying flat on the anvil.

So are you wondering why I made a ‘C’ shape when I really want an ‘S’ hook? It because of this last step, where I have to twist the hook to get that spiral in the shank. I need to heat just the center portion of the ‘C’ and keep the scrolls fairly cool so that they dont distort when I twist. I should have taken a pic of applying heat to the iron since most people use a torch to apply heat to a confined area, I use coals and bank them in areas to heat and remove them from places I want cooler. I’m not against using a torch, its just more of a challenge to me not to use one, and in my mind its truer to old world smithing. Once the shank is properly heated I grab both scrolls with tongs and give it 1-1/2 twists to make the ‘S’ shape.

The scrolls distorted a little bit, but I’m not going to rework them. I kinda like the imprecise nature of this one, it doesn’t look machine manufactured. Narrow ‘S’ hooks like this look better than the fatter ‘S’ hooks that I make for certain things. for instance, hanging my hummingbird feeder looks better with a narrow and long hook because it matches the lines of the feeder better.

Till the next post, keep it hot and hammered. ;)-

Melting metal…. with charcoal

Yup, anyone who knows me well knows I like to do stupid dangerous stuff. Things like really hot metal make me happy. Yes, I’ve burned myself (many times) and had some really really close calls but I never seem to learn my lesson. So if hot metal is good, molten metal is WAY better. I have a small kiln I use to melt down gold and silver for doing jewelry casting, but nothing big enough to do a decent pour in aluminum. Off to the internet I went and found plans to fabricate a small melt furnace powered by …. charcoal! I have to admit I was pretty excited, no propane or other gas fuels, nothing like a pesky cylinder to blow up if I get back-flask or the regulator goes wonky. So I built it, now to test it.

A handfull of charcoal and a blower fan out of a roadside dishwasher and we are in business!

After lighting the charcoal and turning on the blower I noticed that it didnt take long for heat waves to start pouring out of the vent hole, so being the smart person I am I opened the top to see what was going on. The charcoal was starting to catch good, lots of red ember. So I put some aluminum scraps in an old soup can and placed it deep in the furnace with some coals around it. Top goes back on and crank up the blower.

This is what it looked like at this point. Nice red hot color in their nice and bright….. wait, ….. whats that smell? Oh damn thats hot!!! I think I just melted off my eyebrows…..

Yeah, it was way hotter over that exhaust hole than I thought it would be. So I put a piece of aluminum over the top to deflect the heat coming out of that little hole to hell. In about 3 minutes I had this..

The exhaust had melted thought the aluminum 3″ above the hole and the force from the blower blew the center of the hole wide open. On the bright side, if its melting aluminum OUTSIDE the furnace, it must be hot enough inside to do the same, lets look at the pyrometer and see…

Yup, it should be nice and melty in there. Being me, I cant just leave it at that, I have to see for myself. So, turn off the blower, get welding gloves and some hay hooks to lift the lid off, pull out the soup can and turn it out over the concrete.

That my friends is melted aluminum. I made sure the concrete was plenty dry before casting the aluminum out on top of it, I dont need steam turning the concrete and aluminum into shrapnel for my face. Now to figure out something to cast for the next post……

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