Home Foundry

[GreenTwin]

I want to know about the pours where you DID kill yourself. How did they work out?

LOL, I got better.

What I meant was to avoid killing myself.

Summer pours here are very hot, since we often have 80-90% humidity, and 90-110 F temperatures in the summer.

So I generally keep a box fan right next to my chair, and sometimes don't put on full leathers until pour time.

Heat stroke is pretty much my biggest worry.

I have learned to preheat everything very hot, including ingot molds, scrap metal, skimming tools, and lifting tongs.

The way I got the burns below was I preheated an ingot mold using a propane burner, and that did not get the mold hot enough, so there was residual surface moisture on the mold.

When I poured into the mold, the iron popped back out, in a mini-explosion of sorts.
No big deal with a full face shield, helmet, leathers, etc., except a few molten beads of iron went down the gloves.

I think I posted these photos previously.
3rd degree burns in a few spots on the back of the hands.
Nothing to write home about.

I kept the Curaid Silver on it till it dried over in a few days, and eventually the scar tissue filled it all back in.

Someone watched one of my videos, and asked "Where are the fire extinguishers?".
I watched the same video and I could not spot one either.
I do keep a few extinguishers in the shop.

There is nothing really in the vicinity of the furnace area that will burner, other than perhaps the fuel lines.
Diesel is pretty tame stuff. You can drop lit matches into a jar of room-temperature diesel, and it will not light.

My burner is extremely stable, and so I never have a flame-out.

One guy did melt his fuel line, and had a large puddle of flame on the ground.
Diesel just does not catch fire in a puddle very easily.

Kerosene is much more volatile, and you have to be a bit more careful with that fuel.
Kerosene is like gold around this area for some reason, and so I use diesel.

Molten iron is about 2,400-2,500 F, and so it does a lot of damage quickly.

Skin burns are annoying.
The good thing is all the nerve endings are vaporized, and so there is no pain.

I wear a full face sheild mounted on a hardhat, and safety glasses under the face shield.
Eye burns would not be fun.

 

[GreenTwin]

I attended Algonquin the other day, and it was a blast.

Nice smallish show in rural Ohio.
Nice folks, great food, perfect weather.
I will post some photos in the shows section.

There was a cast iron skillet collector there, and he had a skillet out on the table with a bunch of other stuff.
I fogot to get a photo.
So I asked him "Why the skillet?"
He said "Pick it up".
I picked it up, and it was about 1/2 the weight of a typical cast iron skillet.

I did not get a chance to ask him more about it.
It was also about 1/2 the thickness of a typical cast iron skillet.

I asked a buddy of mine who was at the show if he thought the guy would sell it, and he said "Not in a million years, and if he did, you could not afford it".

So that makes me wonder what sort of hoops one would have to jump through to cast a super thin cast iron pan.
Lots of phosphorus I guess.

I could see the faint outline of knife gate across the bottom of the pan, perhaps an 8" long gate.

.

 

[Richard Hed]

LOL, I got better.

What I meant was to avoid killing myself.

Summer pours here are very hot, since we often have 80-90% humidity, and 90-110 F temperatures in the summer.

So I generally keep a box fan right next to my chair, and sometimes don't put on full leathers until pour time.

Heat stroke is pretty much my biggest worry.

I have learned to preheat everything very hot, including ingot molds, scrap metal, skimming tools, and lifting tongs.

The way I got the burns below was I preheated an ingot mold using a propane burner, and that did not get the mold hot enough, so there was residual surface moisture on the mold.

When I poured into the mold, the iron popped back out, in a mini-explosion of sorts.
No big deal with a full face shield, helmet, leathers, etc., except a few molten beads of iron went down the gloves.

I think I posted these photos previously.
3rd degree burns in a few spots on the back of the hands.
Nothing to write home about.

I kept the Curaid Silver on it till it dried over in a few days, and eventually the scar tissue filled it all back in.

Someone watched one of my videos, and asked "Where are the fire extinguishers?".
I watched the same video and I could not spot one either.
I do keep a few extinguishers in the shop.

There is nothing really in the vicinity of the furnace area that will burner, other than perhaps the fuel lines.
Diesel is pretty tame stuff. You can drop lit matches into a jar of room-temperature diesel, and it will not light.

My burner is extremely stable, and so I never have a flame-out.

One guy did melt his fuel line, and had a large puddle of flame on the ground.
Diesel just does not catch fire in a puddle very easily.

Kerosene is much more volatile, and you have to be a bit more careful with that fuel.
Kerosene is like gold around this area for some reason, and so I use diesel.

Molten iron is about 2,400-2,500 F, and so it does a lot of damage quickly.

Skin burns are annoying.
The good thing is all the nerve endings are vaporized, and so there is no pain.

I wear a full face sheild mounted on a hardhat, and safety glasses under the face shield.
Eye burns would not be fun.


View attachment 140722View attachment 140723View attachment 140724View attachment 140725View attachment 140726View attachment 140727View attachment 140728

I'd say you are really lucky on that finger burn. You could have severed a tendon. do yuou tape yuour gloves now?

 

[GreenTwin]

I'd say you are really lucky on that finger burn. You could have severed a tendon. do yuou tape yuour gloves now?

No I don't tape the gloves.
It is not practical, since you have to take them on and off during the process of melting metal.

I do preheat the ingot molds very well, as well as anything else that comes in contact with the molten iron.

They do make some gloves with longer sleeves on them, but that would be rather cumbersome.

Edit:
There are tendons in there ?
.

 

[Richard Hed]

No I don't tape the gloves.
It is not practical, since you have to take them on and off during the process of melting metal.

I do preheat the ingot molds very well, as well as anything else that comes in contact with the molten iron.

They do make some gloves with longer sleeves on them, but that would be rather cumbersome.

Edit:
There are tendons in there ?
.

get some velcro and sew a long handle to it so you can grasp it with your gloves on, then you can take lthem on and off quickly . I know how that goes.

 

[GreenTwin]

The problem with an iron foundry is the radiant heat.

Anything that is not leather basically melts from the radiant heat.
My hardhat and face shield are plastic, and if I lean over the furnace, they will melt quickly.

I read where the radiant energy is related to the cube of temperature, so while melting aluminum at 1,350 F can be a bit warm as far as radiant heat, melting iron at 2,500 F is really very very hot as far as radiant heat. My burner produces almost 200 KW.

Shaded glasses have to be worn when working with iron to prevent burns to the eyes from the infrared.

One can wear leather or cotton clothes around an iron furnace, but pretty much anything else as far as syntheticl clothing is going to melt.

I wear a leather apron and a leather jacket, so two layers of leather.

I generally use heat shields on the pouring shank, and am going to add a heat shield to the skimmer.

A gloved hand can be within about 24" of the crucible for about 15 seconds, and after that your glove is on fire, or is smoking and is about to catch on fire.

Its really pretty simple to avoid explosions though, just preheat everything, and don't have any water or even anything damp anywhere near the furnace area.

.

 

[GreenTwin]

I'd say you are really lucky on that finger burn. You could have severed a tendon. do yuou tape yuour gloves now?

 

[Bentwings]

interesting when I was in about 7th grade in industrial arts we had a welding and forging class ultimately doing a little casting and pattern making this wasn’t very beginning in metal trades we lived in Virginia minnesota the heart of the minn iron range including rail roads . The school had a very big machine shop that we eventually had classes in . I could write a whole story if industrial arts that were taught back then There was even an automotive machine shop that was very popular in high school looking back I YHINK they were smoking periods as many kids smoked I was athletic on the swimming team playin industrial hockey the baseball and football with broom ball in the winter so smoking did not appeal to me at all the coal and coke bins were almost like being at a forge with all the guys smoking there considering the dust it’s surprising there weren’t more fires than there were .
At the risk of being repetitive, I will add a few more comments on backyard casting, and how I learned the process (to date).
Chances are I may have already mentioned some of these items, given my current state of memory (or lack thereof), but some may get some use out of this.

When I got interested in building model steam engines in about 2007, I tried hogging/machining some engine parts out of large chunks of cast iron.
My machines are not very high quality, and not very rigid, and I found the hogging (heavy cutting) process to be inaccurate, time consuming, boring, and very tedious.

I decided that there must be a better way to make model engine parts, and so I started looking at foundry technology.

I looked at what others were doing on model engine forums, and backyard casting forums, and the only folks I recall who were doing extensive 3D modeling work for model engines were Brian Rupnow and a fellow from the UK named Rob Wilson.
It seems like Brian has been doing 3D modeling forever, and I could tell from his work that this was the future of modeling.

Rob Wilson built his own foundry, and began casting his own model engine parts, some of which were in gray iron.
Rob vanished from the internet after a short while (at least as far as what I can find), but his combination of 3D modeling and foundry work basically were what caused me to start learning foundry work.

I found a backyard casting forum called Alloy Avenue, and was on that for years.
A number of backyard casting folks are the art-casting type, and their work is often sort of avant-garde, as is often their attitude towards life, if that is a correct use of the description.
Alloy Avenue was useful for learning the fundamentals of melting metal, but the artwork castings are typically a bronze alloy, and the methods used to melt metal are often as simple as possible, and only complex enough to get bronze to pouring temperatures.
Art castings don't have to be perfect, and so any imperfections (large and small) are often just brazed up after the castings are made.

I had trouble finding anyone who was doing what Rob Wilson was doing, ie: designing his own steam engines, making the patterns, and then castings his own engine parts.

I ran across myfordboy on youtube, and those videos were pretty helpful in getting started with some rudimentary pattern making (in wood), and basic aluminum casting.

https://www.youtube.com/c/myfordboy/videos

I noticed that the guy who started Alloy Avenue was melting and casting gray iron, and so I decided that I had to learn how to do that.

I ran across "ironman" (he has many names; goes by "100model" on this forum).
He goes my "luckygen1001" on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/user/luckygen1001/videos
Ironman is the best description for luckygen1001 because he has mastered the art of iron castings in a spectacular way.
I have learned a great deal from ironman's videos, and from direct conversations with him.
He has a long history of backyard iron casting, and makes excellent iron castings of all types.
He is by far the most knowledgeable iron caster I have ever met.

I ran across "olfoundryman", whose name is Martin, and he has some serious aluminum casting experience, and was a metalurgist at a foundry (as I understand it).
Martin is the best aluminum casting person I have ever run across.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC90RoN_IjSRF18jAG0HIA6g/videos
.

 

[Bentwings]

we all had heavy leather aprons and gloves There were special glasses or goggles too . I don’t remember just how many forges there were but more than enough for rash student , it was incredibly noisy with all the hammering on anvils probably party why I don’t hear well today
The problem with an iron foundry is the radiant heat.

Anything that is not leather basically melts from the radiant heat.
My hardhat and face shield are plastic, and if I lean over the furnace, they will melt quickly.

I read where the radiant energy is related to the cube of temperature, so while melting aluminum at 1,350 F can be a bit warm as far as radiant heat, melting iron at 2,500 F is really very very hot as far as radiant heat. My burner produces almost 200 KW.

Shaded glasses have to be worn when working with iron to prevent burns to the eyes from the infrared.

One can wear leather or cotton clothes around an iron furnace, but pretty much anything else as far as syntheticl clothing is going to melt.

I wear a leather apron and a leather jacket, so two layers of leather.

I generally use heat shields on the pouring shank, and am going to add a heat shield to the skimmer.

A gloved hand can be within about 24" of the crucible for about 15 seconds, and after that your glove is on fire, or is smoking and is about to catch on fire.

Its really pretty simple to avoid explosions though, just preheat everything, and don't have any water or even anything damp anywhere near the furnace area.

.