Well, lately I've been trying out aluminum casting and other at-home stuff. Unfortunately my camera uses the world's worst card format (xd) and I can't take any pictures without using my old computer and that's too much work.
So, first we tried pouring aluminum into stuff and melting it. Sadly, our propane torch only barely melted it so any real casting won't work since it cools too fast... but our two non-cast tests are pretty neat. It made one flat (really flat, I was surprised) sheet when poured on our concrete driveway pad, and it's pointy where it rolled into the little ridges and trenches on the pad. Then we poured it directly into water (this was all really small amounts - we had a narrow window rod that we hacksawed into 1" sections) and it made a nifty drop shape with a crumpled back - it's pretty fun just to hold. Later, I learned that if we had heated it with something hotter, it could have exploded into powder as soon as it hit the water, and metals like tin and lead form long spires (I guess because their "near-solidifying" temperature isn't as hot). Then we tried some failtastic Lego castings in sand, which led to two non-complete failures with just one where a single stud managed to cast before the metal solidified.
Then I found a lovely brass light switch cover and decided that I would plate a dime in brass. Of course, it didn't work, because the alloy wasn't properly mixed on the dime and I got some zinc scunge on one side and some floating clouds of copper/crud. I'll have to try pure copper next.
This week's project is to find some zinc to make better castings out of.
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Topic: Ye Olde Magma Forge: A Blacksmith discussion thread. (Read 20374 times)