Blobs to blocks another way
When I was making the flea eyes, I also cast a simple rectangular bar of aluminium with a second crucible of metal. Although it was quite a good casting it was open cast and hence had a rounded top and...
View ArticleOld books on casting
No one is quite sure when people first started melting metals and casting them in sand, however there are plenty of old books with descriptions and details of techniques. The Archive.org site has a few...
View ArticleWood Pattern-Making
I’ve been reading Wood Pattern-Making by Herbert J McCaslin. It’s the 1997 reprint of a much earlier book and I have to recommend it as being an interesting and potentially useful read for people...
View ArticleDavid Gingery on Kindle
Some of the David Gingery “Build your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap” books are now available on kindle. The prices are not much better than the paperback versions but those can sometimes be a bit...
View ArticlePouring Temperature vs Melting Temperature
I was recently sent some documentation on a small electric furnace for melting and heat treating metal which is of a good size for hobbiests but still a lot more expensive than building your own...
View Article3D printing a pattern for sand casting
In Model Engineer No 4329 July 2008 there was a set of plans by Jan Ridders for building a coffee cup stirling engine. I liked the model but had some ideas for adapting it to make it a little more The...
View ArticleMagnifier Lamp – Heavy metal, shiny metal
I did a test assembly of my magnifier lamp and at full extension it toppled over. So a quick redesign of the base was needed. I carved out the inside with drills and chisels, and filled it up with...
View ArticleCasting a flywheel – Patterns in the sand
This year my main project is to build a small stirling engine, a project that’s been bubbling away since 2011. I decided to make a few customisations to Jan Ridders plans, one of these is to use a cast...
View ArticleCasting a flywheel – Melting metal
Prepare furnace There’s not a lot of preparation to the furnace other than plugging in the fan and connecting the pipe to the side of the flowerpot furnace. However, one key piece of preparation is to...
View ArticleYou are my density
It can be a bit tricky to determine the nature of a mystery metal, and in the home workshop it can be even harder to tell the purity of a metal. So I looked up the density of Aluminium and The post You...
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