ezine

Lost foam E-Zine Sept. 2008

Metal Shop

E-Zine

Sorry I haven't gotten an e-zine out for quite a while...I have been busy with life I guess!

Well, my wife took the kids on vacation for a few days so I went to work...er...I mean play!

Remember to be safe in all you do and don't blame me if you hurt yourself!

Come visit me at Yuwie...I have some HOT! casting videos there

Here is a picture of our garage (where the car usually is parked) while my wife was gone.

I am also working on a furnace which will be the next e-zine. Do you like this Metallic background?

This project was inspired by one of my friends who said she wanted a Swedish horse done in metal.

For this lost foam project, I used the pink insulation foam. I just noticed, you can see the foam that I cut it from in the above picture. It was a two inch thick piece that I cut with a drywall saw. I wanted a rough cut so that the surface would be pitted and would give the final piece an antique look.

I love this drywall saw because it looks so wicked!

Here is the picture I used for the pattern: And here is the piece cut out and covered with

a thin coat of runny drywall mud. I used a paint brush to apply the mud.

Here is the drywall mud dry and you can see the reservoir. I glued the horse to this with a hot glue gun. The angle goes to the sprue.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I put masking tape on the sprue and reservior. I feel like this helps to keep the sprue from collapsing.

Here is the foam imbedded in the loose sand. I used a tin can with both ends cut off for a nice pouring funnel

When pouring lost foam, the metal needs to be hotter than normal...especially if you are trying thin sections and/or pouring aluminum. It is also important to pour as fast as the sprue will accept the metal to keep the sprue from collapsing.

I used brass plumbing fittings for this pour. I put some borax in the crucible at the start and also some crushed food grade glass. The glass makes a nice cover over the molten metal.

Here is the horse right when it was pulled out of the sand...still nice and hot!

Here it has been wire brushed a little.

Next, I ran over it with a sanding disc in my angle grinder and sand blasted it.

I used something called "liver of sulphur" to make it the dark color. I got it from a glass (art) shop...no one else knew what it was. It mixes with water and then, you run a torch over the brass piece while you dab it with the mixture. It took a while for the propane torch to heat this chunk of metal enough for it to work! I believe I got this idea from Ammen's book, "Metalcasting".

Here is the finished horse after I ran the sander back over it and put on a few layers of shellac. I used "Increlac" It is an industrial coating that I heard about from Jerry Twadell.

This picture is of my "foundry area". I don't know why I planted flowers in my foundry!?!

My furnace is made from a helium bottle. I lift the lid off with my gloves and set it on some fire bricks...This pour was done using brass plumbing fittings.

This picture is right when I started the furnace, before I opened up the choke on my Mikey burner.

Well, that's all Folks! Hope you enjoyed it...leave a message on this page in the guestbook so we can all see who has been here! I am going to be finishing up my furnace soon and will send that out when I am done. You can see the start of it in my garage picture. If anyone is interested in making money online, check out this new program. It is about the only thing I have made money with in the last 10 years online...and it is just getting started! CLICK HERE TO SEE IT