Botched Antler Hook Mold, Foundry Upgrades
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- Опубліковано 20 жов 2024
- I tried to cast an antler-hook to hang my apron and face shield on, but my sand let me down a bit due to insufficient mixing time in the muller and cold weather. And I got a new piece of safety gear for my foundry.
Sorry you had a difficult time with the sand. You have more patience than I do. If I see sand crumbling I go ahead and re mull. Excellant video👌
Thanks Clarke, I hope I learned that lesson this time. Maybe it's the whole point of this video... :)
It's hard enough to get the sand to ram up properly when it's barely above freezing anyhow, even if the sand has been mulled enough!
Oh well, call it molding practice I guess. I'm sure glad this is fun to me, otherwise that could have been a little discouraging...
Jeff
@@tobhomottbecause I mull up to 500 pounds before I start, I make darn sure it will work right for me. I also have a rule that I live by, never pour the same day I mold, just wayyyy to much involved in each process.if I try to pull off both I screw up every time. Molding is exhausting and after 4 to 8 hrs of that I need to split the process up with a good nights sleep and start fresh when pouring. Maybe because I'm getting old 🤣 but I prefer to slow it down and try to enjoy it as I go
@@windyhillfoundry5940 your operation is a little bigger than mine. I only have a couple hundred pounds of sand total, and I rarely ever pour more than one mold at a time. I'll get there one day though!
@@tobhomott I dont think I would even try one mold and pour the same day. Seems like bad luck when I try it
@@windyhillfoundry5940 lol, maybe you're right. What's the longest your sand will let you get away with leaving a mold to sit before you cast it? I've only left them sit overnight or for a couple days a few times before, and I always worried they would start to degrade...
Another fun video! Haste makes waste... I have done the same thing. On the other hand, never let perfect be the enemy of good (enough.)
Heh, true. I suppose the trick is to find the line between the two...
I really like the idea with plaster of paris or something to create a "flat surface'" on a non flat surfaced object! Well done! You also reminfd me of myself LOL just keep on trying even when you think "will this be right?" I am still in the process of making molds. I have made a wooden mold for mt ducati logo. I hope to cast it this month. I think I will make my casting sand a little bit more wet then usual. I'm still trying to figure out what works best. Great video!
This is a fun mold to make, but it's a lot more fun when I get my sand right BEFORE I try to make it! Lol, thanks for watching. I'll keep an eye out for your Ducati logo video.
Good to see you're adding the CO monitor.
I think you are right on with the bad mulling making your sand bad, but I also think that is in combination with the cold temps you mentioned in the audio.
Thanks AQTT, the CO meter was late arriving but definitely has always been part of the plan, there's really no other way to know if my ventilation is working properly, other than getting really sick if it isn't! No thanks. Next step is to do some testing to see if the ventilation fan works best with all 3 doors open or with some of them closed. I'd like to try running the furnace without the cobbled together fume hood too just to see; it's possible it is doing more harm by hampering the air flow out of the shed than it is doing good, but only testing with different parameters will tell me for sure.
And yes, the cold weather combined with incomplete mixing in of the water was certainly what made this go so badly. I guess the take-away here should be that when in doubt, it's always better to stop, remull, restart than to just press on and hope for 'good enough' when the sand isn't quite right. Thanks for watching!
@@tobhomott Have you got yourself one of those plant misters spray bottles for adding your water for mulling? Seems like that should give you a more even distribution at the start of the mulling process.
I like my Thrive Reptile Pump Sprayer for misting water on our lizards.
something like this one
www.amazon.com/Exo-Terra-Spray-Bottle-quarts/dp/B004CJS7XW
note: I had to clean a tiny metal burr from the inside of the nozzle outlet to get it to mist properly when we got it.
@@askquestionstrythings I always used an atomizing spray bottle back before I built the muller, but when I use one of those now, it just seems to wet the scrapers and make the sand stick to them so they don't redirect the damp sand under the roller-compacter wheel like they are supposed to. It seems to actually keep the water away from more sand than it moistens. Dribbling it in as seen here seems to work much better... But only if I leave it in there long enough to distribute it evenly!
You must have had the metal plenty hot for it to pour as well as it did. Your metal had to run up hill! Next time I advise you to arrange the ram up so that the center boss of the antlers is above the antlers as it will allow gravity to assist you in the pour. Despite the excess flash it still came out good enough to use. Keep up the good work!
One day I'll build a proper pyrometer so I can actually know how hot I'm pouring... I use the dip test with a preheated rod, it is not the most accurate way I know but it's all I have right now. And the camera lies when it is shooting glowing hot things. If I recall correctly, to the naked eye, the aluminum itself was barely glowing a dull red, hardly visibly glowing at all really. Although a couple days after the fact it's hard to be sure about that...
Hmm, I thought it was a good idea to make it fill from the bottom, so that the flow of metal would be laminar, and not splashing down into each antler as I imagine it would if I flipped it over... If I did flip it over, the metal would still have to run uphill through the gate from the sprue before running back downhill into the antlers, unless I sprued directly into the base. And everything I've read tells me to avoid doing that if possible. There aren't any real thin sections or anything that I was worried would freeze off filling it from the bottom... So that is how I came up with the idea to orient it this way. Would you believe I have actually started over before when trying to mold this pattern, because I accidentally rammed it up "upside down", ie. just as you describe? :)
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm certainly no expert, so I appreciate all suggestions and take them seriously, especially when they come from someone who is one! I'll have to try it your way next time and see how it goes. But I will say that getting it to fill this way hasn't been nearly as difficult as pulling a decent mold off it in the first place! Thanks again, your insights are always appreciated!
- Jeff
I really think you should have put the sand back in the muller. Loved it. I believe it turned out pretty well considering the temperature you're having to deal with. BTW, I include you, not by name, in my comment to Julian about why I subbed. Love the fan noise, it reminds me of the '50s giant insect movies I used to watch lol. good show
Heh, glad you like the fan noises, you're probably the only one. My phone's sound recording "capability" makes the blowers and ventilation fan sound like they are running underwater or something, and a lot louder than they are in real life. The phone camera I used to use a couple years ago sounded better, I think. Personally the sound recording is one thing I would like to improve in the near future, but I'm glad someone is enjoying it meanwhile, lol. Thanks for watching!
lovely antlers tobho, what a great thing to make. your sand looks nice and dry, mine is sopping wet atm, i'm going to try floor mulling (foot powered) for the first time ever soon. i'm going to try to get my sand dryer like yours. that second antler looked amazing! you do some great mould making mate, i need to venture into that arena one day.
Thanks Julian! Just in case it wasn't clear in the video, my sand was actually a fair bit too dry here (as well as not having the water mixed in well enough) - I couldn't get the mold to hold together properly. The cold weather was a factor too I'm sure... I bought a few cheap imported cast iron trinkets like this to use for molding practice a few years ago. They have a whole bunch of them at the local hardware store. I've only managed to get a few good copies of any of them made so far, but they are kind of fun to use for molding practice.
11:15 sometimes you do what you have to do. Those irregular (not flat) patterns are tough to deal with.
As you know, I'm still trying to determine the right moisture content for my sand. Too try and it has no strength, too wet and the surface isn't all that whippy. You sand looks either dry or frozen (another issue I have is too cold seems to equal too dry) is that an optical illusion?
Yup, that pattern is a tricky one, that's actually the reason I bought that piece of cast iron in the first place, for molding practice.
The temperature had literally just come up to 1C that day, so my sand was probably still a bit frozen; that's why I tried to warm it up with the weed burner torch in the muller. In reptrospect, it could have used another minute or so of heating, I think. The time before that, it was the same temperature out and without using the torch, the water I added just turned into tiny little sandy ice balls in the muller. I do think there was more water in the sand than it looked like here, partly from the temperature acting like that, and perhaps partly because I perhaps didn't quite add enough water, but mainly because the water I did add hadn't been given quite enough time to mix in evenly. More torch time and more mulling time, and maybe a little more water next time... That ought to do the trick, I hope... So, no, not an illusion.
That’s karma in a good way! Nice rack(hook)!
You know, I think you're the first person on UA-cam to ever comment on my rack! Lol, thanks
🤣
Just curious is Petrobond not available where you are ? It is a lot more stable and workable than green sand by far. I would love to do that piece in silver or someone else's gold eh. I do really like the piece of perforated angle iron you use. I may have a piece. At any rate you sure know what you are doing in casting and I am sure looking forward to seeing a lot more from you bud.
I have thought about switching to Petrobond before, I do know of one place to buy the ingredients, but it's a 5 hour drive each way and I'm too cheap to pay for shipping, lol... I'd love to try the stuff some day. Thanks for watching.
@@tobhomott I hear you on that one bud. I am way north in BC Canada so I depend on the net to get manythings. I do know you will really like it as it packs great and separates great as well with a bit of dusting.
@@TomokosEnterprize I'm in a rural area in Ontario, just outside of Ottawa city limits, but I've got family in West Kelowna. Beautiful country out there! But I'll pick somewhere with fewer neighbours than they have if I ever move out west. I like to make noise and smoke too much to ever move back into a city, I think. :)
@@tobhomott We have major elbow room here in Vanderhoof (just west of Prince George) I lived in London and Stratford for a few years. WAY too many people there for my liking for sure.
@@TomokosEnterprize elbow room is nice, sounds like you found a nice spot! 😀
I've had plenty of those, I should scrap it and start over again moments too. Do we ever listen to the little voice in our heads, Hell naw. It's always a bigger failure if you don't at least try something you spent 45-60 minutes creating, just to create something, you think is gonna be junk, just to actually have it turn out half way decent. Glad I don't have to deal with all that snow, I like nice cool temps, but not freezing weather. Good that you got it cleaned up enough in there to do some work inside out of the cold, maybe you need a good wood burning stove in there to keep it warm while ya work.
I think with a little more weed burner and a few minutes longer in the muller, this would have worked out ok. But I learned a good lesson - if it's not working, toss the sand back in the muller instead of spending half an hour pounding sand that just won't stay stuck!