You’re really setting up a trap for el gallo apocalíptico, aren’t you.
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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”?
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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:
thatdross is the impurites like the ink on the label.
the refined aluminum ingot weighed 220g and looks like this:
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!
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Cool! I want to see the end product.
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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:
a pirate doubloon., obverse.
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!
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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!
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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!
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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
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thermite is scary shit, man!
think i’ll stick to my propane jet forge for now!
even though this furnace will not melt iron, i was not looking to make:
The Perfect Cast Iron Skillet™
(i would never begin to know just how to season or clean it 
/s)
no sir, i am only beginning my journey into early bronze age smelting. it is funny, because i was on a zoom with Dear Brother, who has just left northern Iraq on his last dig expedition at Nimrud, just outside Mosul. we had a great convo regarding the properties of ancient Mesopotamian bronze casting, and how much had to change to be able to smelt, forge, cast and smith iron over the lower temp metals.
i am doing this for my brother. he is a collector of coinage of the ancient world, and, like me, a “golden age” pirate enthusiast, also one who appreciates the artisanship involved in making a piece (of eight?) in the REAL world.
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Yeah, I’m scared of anything that can melt iron and doesn’t have an “off” switch.
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yeah, man! you’re casting metal, too!
i’m staying away from lead, even though i have fisherman friends what want me to make deep drop jigs for them.
i have cast lead type for far too long in my career. not going back to that buttery smell polluting my body, mind and environs.
melting lead smells like butter, to me. i have spent far too mauch time over a Ludlow, Monotype or Linotype machine to want or need to inhale that again.
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My rec a more of the molding and pouring process. Certainly would not mess with thermite either
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Dealing with a child whose dad works lead professionally. Apparently not too diligent in hygiene, because kid had a lead level of 64 at 2 yr well check. Not quite high enough for chelation, but enough to cost IQ points. This entirely separate from the kid who wound up needing skin grafting after pulling molten lead over on herself. Lead is not our friend, man.
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I used to do Al and pot-metal casting in campfires and backyard bonfires. I’d sometimes prepare plaster-of-Paris molds in advance. Great fun for the beer drinkers.
Back story for the piece I’m showing below: Around 2001, a Norwegian friend of mine was granted US citizenship. At the party in honor of the occasion, I cast 3 or 4 “citizenship medals” out of many, many molten beer cans.
I carved the original out of a disc of beeswax. I intended the design to truly welcome my friend to the greatness of the USA and Missouri at the dawn of the 21st century. I’m still quite proud of it.
The figure depicted is a full profile of former Missouri governor, U.S. senator, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is naked. In his left hand he holds a cross; in his right, a handgun. He treads upon the U.S. Constitution, perhaps wiping his feet. The U.S. flag, “Old Glory,” waves proudly from its pole, lodged in his asshole (John’s Ash-Croft?) at a jaunty, unlikely angle. Finally, barely visible, the micro-penis.
I made two plaster molds from this original in ice-cream buckets. I baked the molds in an oven to try to dry them completely.
The night of the party I was prepared with my molds and tools. Many, many beer cans were melted in a hot, hot fire. I used a big steel bean can for the crucible. I got enough for 4 pours. The molds started to crumble after the first pour, so only the first one was really good with the details. This is the third:
The best one went to my friend, of course, along with a ribbon like an Olympic medal, and I believe it’s still proudly displayed at his house in Kansas City.
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My family took a blacksmithing class near Zion National Park this week. We already knew some of the basics but learned a lot, and the instructor was great. Let the kids do everything, including pounding red-hot steel with a power hammer that was built in the 1880s. Here’s some of what the kids made:
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