The Quick and Dirty Foundry

By

Ron Thompson




These are a few pictures I took to show the gang at Hobbicast. Unfortunately, that groups owner decided to start harassing the membership and most of us moved over to our new group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/castinghobby/. Y'all come! Y'hear?

And if you are local to (or have an interest in) southern Mississippi, our local group is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/msmetalheads/.

The page titles are links to larger pictures.

  1. "Quick and Dirty Melter"

    See how easy it is? A commercial burner, a few firebick and a skillet! I would prefer a "bean pot", as long as it is made from cast iron. Steel crucibles tend to scale and deteriorate, cast iron doesn't seem to.

  2. King Kooker Jet Burner

    This is a King Kooker brand 'yard stove'. Around here (Southern Mississippi) they are used with a big pot to boil crawfish. This has a jet burner rated at 160,000 BTU, not to be confused with the one with the low output cast iron burner. I bought it at Walmart. It came with the hose and regulator to hook up to a 20 pound LP gas tank. The tank did not come with it. Larger tanks work better because the small tank gets cold after a while and the pressure drops. I just put it in a wash tub full of water to prevent this. I hope to put in a yard tank and have the propane delivered. That is the cheapest way to buy it.

  3. Larger view showing the tank and all

    Here I have it set up on the back of my car hauler trailer so I don't have to stoop down, like when it's on the ground. The cans in the middle of the picture are dog food cans. These came from Walmart, and the sides and bottom are one piece. I melted a few times in the blackened one. It worked ok for a short run.

  4. Some fresh aluminum 'ingot'

    The smooth one on the right was melted in the can and poured into the skillet as an ingot mold. It came out pretty good. The other two were melted in the skillet and left to cool. They are rough looking because they still contain some 'dross' or 'slag'. I intend to pour into ingot molds from now on.

  5. Cast iron skillet of aluminum and the wire it was melted from

    This shows the AL wire I was melting. A friend told me his neighbor was stripping a bunch of wire to sell as scrap. He was getting 35¢ a pound for it. I bought a hundred pounds from him. This should do me for a while!

  6. 5" pipe, soon to be a crucible

    I haven't been able to locate a cast iron bean pot and I need a larger crucible. I guess this will do for now. I cut it on my 4" X 6" bandsaw by rotating it to finish the cut.





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