pizzaman
Well-Known Member
For anyone else who feels it's not enough to make your own beer, I've been looking a lot into the hobby of sand casting aluminum. Does anyone have any experience with this? Yuri?
From what I've read you can do this with something as simple as charcoal and a coffee can. Since I just happen to have a propane burner I could get a pretty nice setup going. I've always had the desire to build things out of something other than wood, and can't quite afford welding gear yet.
Here's the basic idea for anyone not privvy to what I'm talking about:
DIY Sand Cast Aluminum 1.0.1
Required Materials:
You first make your cast out of the material of your choice(wood, clay, metal?) Then you bury the cast into your mold with sand. Any sand will do if you run it through a sifter, there are certain sands that will work better than others. Once the mold is set and you have holes for pouring the molten aluminum you heat up your furnace and begin melting your scrap metal. You can use beer cans, aluminum siding, just about anything made of metal that you can fit into your furnace. Beer/soda cans do produce a lot of slag so you will need something to skim the slag off the top of the crucible as it cooks(a metal spoon works fine for this). Once all the slag has been cooked out you let the aluminum cool to the right temperature so it's not so hot it ruins the sand mold, then you carefully pour it into the holes in your mold. Once cooled you remove your new aluminum cast from the mold, trim, sand, and polish it, and voila! you just made something out of aluminum.
That's my basic rundown of it, if you want more info check google and youtube for lots of cool info. I'll be posting more info and hopefully pics if I ever get into this.
From what I've read you can do this with something as simple as charcoal and a coffee can. Since I just happen to have a propane burner I could get a pretty nice setup going. I've always had the desire to build things out of something other than wood, and can't quite afford welding gear yet.
Here's the basic idea for anyone not privvy to what I'm talking about:
DIY Sand Cast Aluminum 1.0.1
Required Materials:
- Furnace
- Crucible
- Casting Mold
- Scrap Aluminum
- Sand
You first make your cast out of the material of your choice(wood, clay, metal?) Then you bury the cast into your mold with sand. Any sand will do if you run it through a sifter, there are certain sands that will work better than others. Once the mold is set and you have holes for pouring the molten aluminum you heat up your furnace and begin melting your scrap metal. You can use beer cans, aluminum siding, just about anything made of metal that you can fit into your furnace. Beer/soda cans do produce a lot of slag so you will need something to skim the slag off the top of the crucible as it cooks(a metal spoon works fine for this). Once all the slag has been cooked out you let the aluminum cool to the right temperature so it's not so hot it ruins the sand mold, then you carefully pour it into the holes in your mold. Once cooled you remove your new aluminum cast from the mold, trim, sand, and polish it, and voila! you just made something out of aluminum.
That's my basic rundown of it, if you want more info check google and youtube for lots of cool info. I'll be posting more info and hopefully pics if I ever get into this.
