That paper towel holder is going nowhere.
There used to be a regular feature in Popular Science (IIRC) called “Wordless Workshop” (drawn by Roy Doty). Just add a photo of your old paper towel holder blowing over at a picnic, and one of you looking puzzled with an idea bulb over your head, and this post would fit the WW template perfectly.
EDIT: probably a lot of us remember the strip. Here’s one:
I find the requirement to send one’s social security number with the idea submission really troubling
You noticed that too? I remember when that was common practice. People used to hand out their SSNs for hardly any reason at all.
dude, I need to make that
I was wondering about that, starting with “why would you need more than a return address for the winner’s cheque?”
Maybe because the $50 prize for having your idea selected is “income”? The comic ran until 1990, and that dishwasher looks '80s vintage. According to some random inflation calculator I just looked up, $50 USD in 1980 is about $190 today, so maybe a repeat winner might make enough additional income to attract the attention of the tax authorities?
But yeah, it probably was normal practice. And it feels very weird today.
hmmm… what’s cooking, you ask?
no, this is not a novel approach to t-day turkey, but something new!
Damn, man! Jealous! I just put a small propane forge on my wish list for some very small-scale metal working, but that looks dangerous!
one needs open space and gravel or sand to work in, and no overhanging vegetation!
it is a bit scary to light the jets, even my bbq grill lighter was too short, but i did keep my eyebrows!
mum is the hot shop expert, having been a glass and metal artist and ceramicist for my whole life. looking forward to her sand cast glass work coming soon.
You’re really setting up a trap for el gallo apocalíptico, aren’t you.
fried chicken, anyone?
perhaps i can bury him in sand and pour in molten bronze in a “lost wax” method of casting a perfect statue to honor the “lost chicken”?
Turning scrap cardboard into an oversized gingerbread house for a float in our local holiday parade. Maybe we should rent it out as an AirBnB afterwards.
ha! a tiny house. where you are, you could rent that for big bucks!
but no, seriously, i wonder how you make those lovely curves and cut the shingle pieces so cleanly? are you just extremely steady of hand and wield a mean box cutter? band saw? router?
i am in awe.
Thanks; the shingles were accomplished via band saw and hot glue gun, moving on to the trim next!
The frame is made of PVC pipe from a disused sprinkler system I tore out of the backyard so it’s about 95% reused materials so far.
Just hope it doesn’t rain on parade day…
Putting finishing touches on my next album release (it’ll be my 42nd since 2018).
Did one final edit today and the cover art (well… cover image, it’s not deeply meaningful art or anything). Mastering over the next few days and release soon.
hot shop progress, day two: first pour.
today we collected up a whole bunch of beer cans from me and a neighbor’s recycle bins. half a rubbish bag of flattened, dried cans. here are some left overs, out of the oven after one hour at 300F. this step assures there is nothing wet inside that can cause a boiling blowout!
melting point of aluminum is around 1220F/ 660C and we melted around 50 cans of various sizes.
the yield was 393 grams, with 173 grams of dross and unusable slag:
now when i need refined aluminu to cast, i have my first ingot ready!
EDIT to add:
going to have to enlist a great deal more beer and soda pop drinkers if i want to get anywhere! my liver can’t hold out!
Cool! I want to see the end product.
many of the items i needed for basic casting hot metal has either arrived via post, or procurement through dollar store/ second hand store purchases at minimal outlay.
so today, we attempted our first cast in a frame called a flask. this is a two-sided frame that gets packed with fine, dense, moist(!) sand with an object to be molded. blah, blah, blah… technical shit and then pour in the molten, refined aluminum ingot we made in an earlier post. we basically melted about 50 beer and soda cans to make a 220g refined aluminum bar.
melted that and poured into our sand mold to get what i am calling a “partial success”. the mold did not completely fill, due to my vent hole plugging. however, what did fill, looks pretty cool and i thought i would share this progress:
and reverse.
you can see where the bottom portion did not fill in, and the metal is pockmarked and pitted. that can be remedied with a flux agent, like borax, added to make the aluminum flow better.
for a first attempt at a craft i have never tried, i’m cool with this. but stay tuned! finer work will progress as we learn by just doing it!
I did some Al casting in high school shop class. I remember packing a frame with fine moist sand, then putting the master on top and digging two tracks in the sand–one for entrance of the molten aluminum and second for exit of air. A second frame on top was filled with sand and packed. I think we used copper pipe to form the holes down to the entrance/exit tracks. Then filled it with molten aluminum.
I think I made an aluminum fish from a wood master. Alas it’s gone the way of all things.
Gad I haven’t thought of this in literally decades. Thanks for the memory trigger! It was one HS class I really liked.
A while back I learned how to make a silicone mold of a model detail, then used a two part resin to make copies. No heat! Just mixing and pouring. But I didn’t do enough casting to use up the materials; the components solidified in the cabinet after a year. Now I just make 3D models on the computer, with a service doing the actual 3D printing. So much easier!
that’s cool that your HS had a hot shop! i did learn welding and some basic metal working/ machining in HS ag class (i grew up in rural BF texass, so ag class was the “jack-of-all-trades” shop class.)
i made this sand mold from two poker chips from a dollar store playset which, when the mold was separated into the two halves, i impressed a silver skull ring into the one side. i can see some things that i can improve upon before doing this again, tomorrow, with some pewter ingots that i purchased for less than a buck a pound. i hope to have some more detailed pics then, so you can see the sand mold in detail.
eta: the reverse side of the doubloon shows “00”. i first impressed the poker chip that had “10” on it, then carefully inverted it and impressed again in the soft sand to make the “00” look like zeroes with vertical strikes! and it worked!
Your coin casting reminded me of a YouTube video I saw where they made a cast iron pan with thermite, but some of the casting process might be helpful to you?
Cody has done other videos casting stuff like mushrooms
