hospital

[mite5255]

Thanks for that Frank, I'll get my Dr to check out my gallblader

[Harry]

So you get anything Mike? Hope its all passed and nothin serious.

[mite5255]

So you get anything Mike? Hope its all passed and nothin serious.

All good Harry just a false alarm

[F.C.]

Good to hear, Mike. Bet that took a load off your mind. This place wouldn't be the same without ya!!

[mite5255]

Good to hear, Mike. Bet that took a load off your mind. This place wouldn't be the same without ya!!

Thanks Frank
For years suffered with chest pain but with this one I was a little breathless with it. To be quite honest Frank, this place would not be the same without a lot of the members that hang about here. the thing that I really love about this place and its members is, the people that know help the people that don't, and yes that also happens over at the other place, but here there is more people that actually try and do castings without trying to reinvent and build the perfect furnace and and burner

[F.C.]

You can have the bestest, greatest, most state of the art equipment on earth to melt metal with but if you don't have a clue about casting, itself, it's all worthless. What causes people to go round and round in attempt to perfect their personal state of the art furnace/burner designs is FEAR. Fear of the intensity of the fire, fear of the roar, fear of getting up close and personal with a pot of molten metal, and most of all fear of making a cast people would judge being sub-par. FACT... every cast I've made has a defect, as well every cast I've seen made by professionals, if I studied theirs close enough I'd spot the defects in those as well. Had you not pointed out the blemishes in yours, Mike, we wouldn't have so readily noticed. Nothing builds confidence greater than "DOING IT" yourself, be damned what others think of the results. My hat's off, and my hearts out to anyone that can get past their personal inhibitions and actually brave the intensity, as well complexity of creating a successful pattern and sand mold, and produce something as nice as you did.

When you get the notion to do a thinner plaque, make an upset for your sand mold to give your metal more head pressure as it enters the cavity. That's the key to getting the cavity filled before it has a chance to chill. If you're not using corn flour in your sand mix you should be. It will assist your sand in capturing sharp details and not erode at crisp edging when you lightly blow your mold face free of loose grits prior to closing the flask. More carbon (from burnt flour) will further aid in creating casts that have less surface scale which will make it easier to clean up afterward. If you don't use corn flour I'd recommend powdering charcoal brickettes and mixing that @3-5% into a face sand mix to use to face your pattern at the onset of packing a mold, then use the regular sand mix to continue filling the flask. Your cast will come out much cleaner and brighter, and with sufficient head pressure you can cast a bit cooler which would minimize the capture of sand grain texture.

[Rasper]

Yeah, I get tired of all of that burner and furnace talk over there too. When I was a wood boat builder back in the 60's and 70's, a lot of the back to the Earth people decided to build boats and came down to the Chesapeake Bay where I lived. I noticed pretty soon that most of them were tool collectors. They spent months and years getting ready to build their boats. Most of them never did. Most of the real boat builders had only a few old, high quality, tools.

Richard

[mite5255]

Frank....I always use a upset, plus I do use corn flour in my sand at 5%, I have some charcoal here, would there be any benefit in using both corn flour and charcoal together

[F.C.]

Carbon on the sand face is always beneficial. I'd make that charcoal as fine as baby powder, put it in a section of one of your wife's nylon stockings she discards, then pat the sack full of carbon over your sand mold face before you close the flask. I do this for plaques that have a lot of typeset and letters about 1/4 inch height (Roman T) with sharp crisp angles, skinny thin appendages, and teeny cavities like in the "A", "B", "E", "P", "R"'s. Yeah, sometimes it takes three or more times pack'n a mold with that typeset but it sure looks sharp and professional when it's cast and cleaned up. When you get to a point where you're have'n difficulty pull'n typeset patterns off the sand face, drill your pattern board at the corners (inside the sand flask area) and insert thin interior house trim nails through the back of the pattern board (into the sand mold face before you pack up the back half of the mold) so the thin nails protrude a good inch into the mold face sand. Pick areas of the pattern face for these protrusions that are easily cleaned up and detailed after, and will avoid disturbing lettering. The thin nails (after some repetitive taps with a screwdriver handle across the back side of the pattern board prior to lift) will work as vertical guide pins to help achieve a proper even lift straight off the lettering. Make sure when you drill the holes it's done with a drill press to achieve a snug, perfectly straight, vertical hole. Use powdered graphite on the pattern face... ensure your lettering gets a good dusting and the graphite gets rubbed in well to provide that smooth slick surface on all surfaces you can reach of each letter. Then dust lightly with carbon, close the mold, and pour.

If your product tends to be abrasively rough on the face (like sandpaper) it's either your metal is too hot, too much moisture in your sand, or a combination of both. If there's only one or a few spots that are rough and the rest of the product is nice and smooth, then it's moisture that didn't get evenly distributed in your sand mix. A dusting of carbon often assists in evening out the moisture mix imperfection effects that otherwise occur as long as it's not majorly uneven throughout your sand.

FYI... Almost got my furnace built. The class of novice artists I've been instructing have got their art pieces done, plaster molds made, they removed the modeling clay from within their molds last night and detailed imperfections in the mold to assure a wax duplicate can be cast within them and removed without difficulty. Next week they cast their waxes and fine detail those into sand patterns. I'm seriously hoping I can get that furnace done and ready in time so they can see their work get transformed into metal without too much delay. Working remote online for that company in Alaska is tapping my patience. All day yesterday I sat about the house waiting for input and edits for work I've been doing. Nothing... a whole day wasted I could have been in the shop doing MY THING. It's been like this a lot all last week. I'm about to pull the plug and quit, send them back their tower computer, then go file early for social security benefits and officially retire. They'll probably tell me to keep this laptop as it's old and a bit cantankerous at times... sorta like me.. HAHA. Hell, much of the key letters are worn off from so much use over the past 4 years. Anyway... if not, I'll have my son's laptop (that he gave to his mom) taken in to be restored from some virus she got on it from her mess'n about online. It pretty much got the blue screen of death. All it really needs is a new hard drive. How spendy can that be?

Looks like today might be a repeat of yesterday sit'n about within reasonable response to any email communication my employer shoots my way. Yeah... I'm not taking this much longer. The wife's doin great with full time employment as a massage therapist in town (3 days a week, 4 days off) and make'n way more than she did work'n 40 hrs - 5/days a week before. And... she's got her own clinic I built her on the house last summer which she's got repetitive customers coming over for massage therapy which she pulls in 100/day at least on her time off. Basically, she schedules one in the mid morning, and one in the mid afternoon. That gives her ample opportunity to mess about in the yard, go to town, etc, between clients. She can cover the bills till my social security bennies kick in. Once I'm up and running in my studio, I'll be back to pull'n in the lions share of the income again... most of it under the table and unreported. HAHAHA...

[mite5255]

First things first Frank, are you cantankerous, wow thats never come across in you writing
Shhhhhhhh don't even write about under the table and unreported, you never know who's watching

I've taken in all that sensay, I have just come in from pounding up some charcoal in my mortar and pestle and notified, or should I say ask my wife for some stocking.... Nothing will happen till at least Monday anyway, I'm on night shift at the moment

I hate wasting time waiting on someone or something that's promised and doesn't turn up