My First Perlite Foundry
So when I got to Australia I still wanted to be able to do
some simple metal casting. Since I was staying in a a sort of
youth hostel I ended up teaming up with Ross to build a
foundry. These pictures were taken where we cast, in his back
yard. I showed Ross my original
Coffee Can foundry
design and we decided to build something a little bigger and, since we
were not sure of how many casts we were going to make, cheaper.
We used a jacketed design. The outside was a stainless
steal bucket with an old coffee can for a lining. The space between the
inner can and the outer bucket was packet with perlite for insulation. For
a crucible we used a steel milkshake container to which we had added a steel
wire handles.
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We tried to keep as much free space as possible around the foundry. We used an air
compressor to force air over the charcoal. We kept the air compressor in the garage
to keep the noise down. As it was we were casting late into the night and I was sure
Ross’s neighbors were going to come over and kill us.
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We used two blocks of metal (legs from an old exercise machine) to elevate the
foundry up off of the brick. At the time we did this to aid airflow but subsequently
I have learned that you don’t want to work with molten metal directly over any kind of
porous surface. Water absorbed by any porous surface hit by molten metal will flash
instantly into steam causing the surface to and explode or spawl.
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Foundry post-mortem
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So all good things must end and our first foundry was
no exception. Only built as a test design and intended
for one or two casting sessions this first design
lasted for an estimated 13 hours before needing to be
replaced. As part of our redesign we did
a post mortem analysis
of this foundry.
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Foundry post-mortem
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The area where we had the foundry set up was well
lit. As a result we could work into the night. One
casting session we turned the lights off for a few
short pictures in order to take some photos of the
foundry at night. The time laps
effect makes some of them quite beautiful.
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