Why a backyard foundry? Casting, an art and science going back thousands of years, directly connects one to ancient times of Earth, Water, Air and Fire.
Yet each pour is a new act of creation. Solid metal changes state to become a formless liquid. Poured into a mold, it assumes new shape and form in the void left by the patern now removed. Whereupon, simply cooling solidifies the molten metal, locking the new shape in time and space.
Casting has allowed us to build machines that make all the other machines.
This anchor to times past lets me build new, repair old, and make tools I can't afford.
Additional goals are to become self reliant, recycle scrap metal, maybe make a buck reproducing antique hardware, but mainly to keep up with some teenagers in Michigin that have put movies of their backyard foundry on the web.
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| Pouring molten brass into sand molds. |
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| Furnace showing propane/leaf blower burner with ingot mold in foreground. |
The crucible tongs were made using blacksmith and welding skills to copy a pair of commercially available tongs.
The wooden boxes that the sand is packed in, called flasks, are homemade. The first casting were with green sand: water, sand and clay (100 lbs sand, 6 lbs of bentonite and 6 lbs of water). Now we are using K-Bond.
The furnace is fired with propane and uses a leaf blower for forced air.
