Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Not bad but nearly a mess.

To cast this I ran the crucible quite full. With the last aluminium ingot floating in the melt, it was about 8 mm to the top. Of course as this melted, and the rest of the melt got hotter, the crucible ended up pretty much brim full - stuff expands when you heat it up - who knew?. That makes for a touchy time pouring it. Spilling liquid aluminium is probably a bad way to end the evening.

Here is the pattern with the casting, I've cut off the feed gate, and filed down the flashing around the edge.
Here is a closer shot. For a sand casting the finish is pretty good.


A simple hardface for a furnace.

It's a flu liner for a stove. It's petty much the same material as dense fire brick. I've used a slightly longer one for my new gas fired furnace.

It sits on a packed sand base, it has Ceramic wool around it, and the lid is fire cement and perlite.

It's survived a few melts at this point. It has quite a few cracks. But it was free so it's a win.