Cooking with gas

[Bob Roller]

I admire your energy Mike...that's a lot of work.

Yes indeed,any energy at all is admirable.My get up and go has got up and gone.
Bob Roller

[Daryl]

That was amazing, tks Dave C.

[Dphariss]

Nice.

[Hatchet-Jack]

I hope you're poring a Christian's Spring box and a side plate.

Nope, no boxes yet. I think he wants to pour every weekend until my inventory is full again, probably be 6 weeks till boxes are poured.

OK I can wait!

[t.caster]

That brings back old memories, and not necessarily good ones either. I worked for 23 years at one of the worlds largest engineer/build companies of sand mold foundry automation. I was a project engineer who designed, supervised the build and installation of the equipment at foundries all over the country. Some were high tech like GM, Ford, John Deere, Navistar and some were low tech like shown here. All iron and brass foundries were HOT and DIRTY and so smelly.  Aluminum foundries were quite advanced and clean as a rule. I started out as a draftsman working with paper and pencil and ended up putting it all on CAD and eventually all machines and complete systems on 3-D CAD/CAM. Then at 53 I got downsized along a bunch of us "old boys"! I've seen a few things!

[oldtravler61]

  Mike very interesting indeed. But your going to have to sell a bunch. To pay for that hundred million $$$$ lock you want..
Oldtravler

[Metalshaper]

Mike,

I assume that's petro-bond sand,since it's a production facility?   I was gifted a 25lb tub of PB and a small cope/drag,  when my bud quit teaching.
Just haven't rebuilt my foundry to try and attempt anything. Enjoy seeing the process, Thank You!

Respect Always
Metalshaper/Jonathan

[kutter]

Can the 'sand' be reused over and over?

Looks like there's a lot of work in cutting the castings from the trees and flashing. Do you actually saw cut them or clip them off , just wondering.

Scrap brass from ?? used or any old combination of assorted brass melted together will do.

I never worked in a foundry (obviously).
Thnks for the informative post and pics.

[bptactical]

The knuckles are a nice touch!

[Austin]

Very cool and interesting!

[Ken G]

Looks like some very labor intensive hard work. Interesting process.  Thanks for posting the pictures.  Interesting. 

Ken

[rick/pa]

Boy, did that ever bring back some memories!  We used to have a small foundry not far from where I live. It cast parts for Crown Metal Products that made the small locomotives that you used to see at amusement parks. One summer when I was in high school a friend and I got a job shoveling molding sand out of a railroad gondola car, I think it was 60 ton of sand. Took us two days for which we were paid the grand total of $20..........For both of us.  I learned a valuable lesson that summer.  Always find out what you're going to be paid BEFORE you take a job.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Metal_Products

[Not English]

Thanks for posting. My great gbrandfather owned a foundary. I was always interested in casting, but have never seen it done.

[Nazgul]

I repaired forklifts for 40 years, got to see many interesting places and processes over the years. Just before retiring I spent a lot of time in a local foundry that cast steel forklift counterweights. Everything from 1,500 lbs to 9,000 - 10,000 lb pours. It was dirty, hot dangerous but mesmerizing.
They had a cooling room that was 2 stories high. Imagine a 50 yard long room filled with cooling counterweights on racks that started out yellow hot. You could walk down the middle of the racks fast but anything slower was too much heat. Warm in the winter, unbearable in the summer.

Don

[44-henry]

That is neat. We still teach some basic foundry work in our program at Millersville. Used to be many of the high schools in the area taught foundry, now it is pretty rare to see a program still teaching it. Here are a couple pictures of our small setup which we mainly use for alumnium, but I have done a number of side projects in brass and bronze in the past. This furnace has probably cast a fair share of longrifle hardware as building longrifles our program back in the days when Henry Kauffman was a faculty member here, some of you may remember him as the author of numerous books including the Pa-Ky Rifle, and some work he did with Kindig.

Anyway, here are a couple photos of the furnace and one of our typical casting projects, a small grinder.