Member postings for the artfull-codger

Hi Luker,I need to cast bronze barstock but the last time I tried it [a few yrs ago] vertically it was great on the outside but after turning it it was full of porosity,inside so I cast some horizontally with sprue & feeder & they came out ok but a mess on molding them, this of course was before & knew about your inoculant which I've just used[big thanks] perhaps I'll try again vertically.,saves time .

I've had a tangential tool for years & use it for all of my plain turning,& facing but be careful of taking "bonus cuts" in brass unless you grind it with no top rake as it grabs.all my brass tools have no top rake.

Graham.

Oops, added more pictures & got details mixed up!!1 & 2 ok 3 first lighting up with wood4 moulding boxes ready to pour 5 pre warming brass on top of crucible with more on the top of the lid 6 ready for lift out 7shake out & finished castings!

Hi
Luker, [son came up & loaded up for me!! thanks Philip] a few pictures of my set up 1st one showing the drag with the patterns removed,2nd one the "pot fodder" bath taps rally plaques plumbing fittings etc,3rd one moulding boxes ready to pour 4th one shakeout & lastly the finished castings for the little lads loco fettled polished acid etch primed & 2 coats of 2k suzuki red.

Hi Noel, thanks for that info, when I started work at the local high school one of the first things I did was get the unused flamefast crucible furnace up & running I had no ingot moulds so I poured surplus alloy into large jam tin till it was semi-hard then tipped it out into crucible sized lumps all ok for a few melts till one day the bottom fell out!!! after that I made moulds & got refractory wash. hehe .I'll look at your " melting brass in a spin drier"

Graham.

Hi Luker, thank you for that info, [embarrassed now as I have the back numbers of ME, & should have looked,!!] I've taken some photo's of the melt & the furnace in action & have just been fettling the castings up today I'm etch priming then paint with traditional red background I've polished the letters but I'll have to get my son to print them in here as I don't know how to, he should be up this week sometime once again thanks for your help, photo's to follow.

Graham.

Hi Luker, lit the furnace today, [coke fired] & cast 2 nameplates & 2 number plates in brass for a friends little boy [6 yr 0ld] for his 5" battery loco he built for him, patterns made from mdf cut out on a fretsaw, I had small turnings chrome plated brass bath taps few plumbing fittings & few old steam rally plaques,,Put a tablespoon of your additive in the crucible & the brass cast really well, no porosity lovely castings, cleaned up well, very little if any zinc loss I always keep a lid on my crucibles & coat tools,skimmers pyrometer probe etc in contact with the metal with zircon based refractory wash also ingot moulds & tart tins as well as you will know molten alloys corrode steel as well as poss contaminating the melt, did you put details of your oil burner in model engineer? I'm interested in building one & like the sound of it ,thanks.

Graham.

Thanks for the info Luker I'll let you know how I get on.

Graham.

Hi Luker I must look at your oil fired burner seeing as how i inherited gallons of oil from my late father in laws central heating tank, next door. luckily I live in a village & we have a large back yard so noise isn't an issue & we're not in a smokeless zone , the good thing about coke furnaces is they're quiet, I use a bouncy castle blower with a home made restricter disk on the inlet, no electronic gizmo to go wrong, in fact when I'm fully glowing the inlets almost closed so the motors doing hardly any work in fact it's using less electric!! btw I've mixed up some of your additive for melting fine turnings, I'll be trying it this week. as I have some nameplates to cast for his loco .

Graham.

Interesting posts about different fuels,I built my first furnace nearly 50 yrs ago with my late father,[& burnt a few out since!!] the only information for an amateur [like me] was B.Terry Aspins "bible" foundrywork for the amateur, no internet then, with folk casting alloy wearing flip flops & shorts & pouring it into tart tins & getting loads of praise on their apparent skills, as Luker says [& I really enjoyed his articles & also learned a few things from him!!] there's various ways to build a furnace, when I started I built mine to run on coke with a blower, as per B.T.A. 50 yrs on I'm still on coke poss because we always have a couple of tons in for our rayburn cooker but as said above it's getting more difficult to get coke now with demise of the steelworks,I did build a small propane furnace powered by my flamefast torch & it's really good but having inherited a large amount of central heating oil along with the central heating burner I might try that, propane is really expensive, of course you can get re-fillable bottles & it's much more cheaper at the forecourts.

Graham.

The original bell was cast up here in norton stockton-on-tees by warners foundry but subsiquently cracked when testing [ an arguement ensued between Warners & the designer as to who was at fault,] so was melted down & recast at the whitechappel bell foundry.

Hi Rob welcome, ,good bunch here I'm in N yorks myself [ts15 area.]

Regards Graham.

I use smith & allan vehicle enamel for models & also for all my alloy castings ,but I allways 2 pack etch prime everything first as paint just chips off alloy & brass if not etch primed ,it sprays, airbrushes & brush paints well & then into the rayburn cooler bottom oven overnight,& I don't need the mrs "permission" either!!.for spraying I thin with cellulose thinners. or white spirit if needed for brush painting

Edited By the artfull-codger on 29/12/2021 16:30:34

I used zinsser bullseye 123 on a stain on our ceiling & it cured it ok

Just had a call from an oriental "gentleman" had my name, usual start "how are you today sir? it seems the warranty on my washing machine is running out & I need to extend it really? sez I & what make is it , indesit sez he , ours is a hotpoint sez I so you're talking b******s aah so would you like to extend it then? err I don't believe in warranties sez I , phone promptly cut off by him,The best it it's a second hand one we got from my wifes late Auntie & the one before that was second hand from my wifes Brother.

They must be doing the rounds Michael, as I got the same one last week & as we're with Eon, it looked pretty convincing the coloured logo but not quite right, I just reported it as phishing, especially as the meter man had just been round a few days previously.

When I used to repair clocks I used an old steel tape measure taken to bits & the spring at the back of the measuring tape was just right for the ones I repaired, I've wound the local town hall clock up for 29 yrs[ A Gillet & Bland Turret clock] it has a wooden pendulum rod & a large cast iron bob, The suspension spring broke & the rating nut made a nice hole in the floor[still there] it was about 14 thou thick,I had an old panel saw in the workshop so I bent the blade to the handle left & right & it went back perfectly straight so I cut a piece off making sure it was longways machined it up & linished it down from18 thou to 14 fitted it with my sons help,& smeared it with grease to prevent rust & it's been on ever since about 25 yrs!! I mentioned it to a local colleague & he said that it would be good spring temper steel [He's a local prominent clock maker & repairer & one of the finest if not the finest in the country]

Hehe, I chuckled when I read your post Nigel, [not about the scam] but the fact that they just can't pronounce GRAHAM,as you say it's always gra- hamm!!

Regards Graham.

Got an email today purporting to be from e-on [our electricity supplier] almost same logo & colour, saying that owing to an admin error they owe me £85,from my recent bill ,they needed my name, address,bank details ]mams maiden name in order to pay me??hmm don't think so they allready have them details to pay my bills also my recent bill was half that.needles to say it was reported as phishing, but could have easily fooled some people.

Hi Bob,

Good idea, you're a man after my own heart, in the days of Westbury,Chaddock, Tubal cain [not the american]allthough he is good & others,we had to make do & re-purpose things because there wasn't the equipment available or the info like there is now,even so I still like "re-purposeing" things & can't bear to throw anything out or refuse "gifts" from people,& lots of our stuff has been repaired, I hate the throw away society,sadly it's often cheaper to buy new than repair,

Graham.