(no subject)

[randomdreams]

Yesterday morning, threemeninaboat's sister came over and dragged us off to the Lavender Festival at a remote design center of the Denver Botanic Gardens.
They had some lavender.


Also a working farm, lots of pollinators, and lots of crafts. They'd opened up the historic farm and outbuildings for us to look around in.
This caught my attention in the blacksmith shed.

It's a wheel shrinker. You heat up the steel wheel rim for a wooden-wheel carriage and smash it together using this, so you can make a wheel rim fit a worn wheel. Typically, in blacksmithing books, if the wheel rim doesn't shrink tight onto the wheel you have to cut it, reweld it smaller, and start over.

I set up the casting equipment yesterday and did another aluminum pour.


This time, I fired the mold more gently, but it still cracked enough that when I removed it from the oven, it came out in three pieces. They were big solid pieces, though, so I put them back together carefully and then set them in a sand-clay mixture, put some steel plates on top to weight them down, (because last time a crack in the mold meant aluminum leaking out floated the mold and it only half filled) and poured it.
Here it is just after pouring.

And once it's frozen.


The stuff that leaked out and ran across the sand made a cool shape.


I pulled the mold out intact.


Here's the result.


In this shot you can see flash where the aluminum leaked into the mold crack.


But the result is a sound casting with plenty of material for finish machining, so this is a successful casting even if it's not a successful mold.


This morning Revel came back over, because we're more fun than his dog sitter.


I tried to convince him that we're not so much fun by taking him out for a 4km walk in 90F weather but he said we were still awesome.

Comments

[elusis]

I showed F the pic of the Lavender Festival and he said "do they make 'Glad You're Not Here' postcards?" (he has a terrible lavender allergy.)

You and stray dogs are hilarious. It's a shame Monty can't be trusted around other pups.

[randomdreams]

Dogs can tell I like them, and I suspect we give out better kibble than the other houses.

[elusis]

It's like dog Halloween at your house. "They have full-sized candy bars good kibble!"

[threemeninaboat]

I was thinking of that but was nice enough to not send you one :)

[elusis]

Well we would have laughed. :D

We were looking at Air B&B/VRBO properties to stay in with my mom and uncle in a couple of weeks, and one of them was actually a stone cottage in which they dry lavender from the rafters. F was all ヽ(｀Д´)ﾉ

[fbhjr]

Cool photos!
The leaked metal does look cool!

[randomdreams]

I'm a sucker for molten metal. It was just beginning to solidify and the surface goes all pointy as little crystals come out.

[rebeccmeister]

Heh, the molten metal reminds me of ant nest casts: http://blog.wildaboutants.com/2010/page/26/

And yay for a successful cast! Are the mold cracks/leaks going to throw off the dimensions of the piece(s)? This also looks like a new set of shapes.

[randomdreams]

This is a sample dimension piece. The Spitfire intake manifold is two ovals that join together into a single 40mm diameter round hole, to which the carburetor bolts. There's a front one for two cylinders, and a rear one for those two cylinders, and the ears on the plate to which the carbs bolt go in opposite directions for the front and rear. As a result, the intake manifold is one piece, and the plate is a second piece that slots into the first piece in one of two different ways, one for the front, one for the rear.
This is the carb mount plate. The four kind of spline looking bumps you see are the index pins that set the two different angles at which this attaches to the respective intake manifolds.

A crack would definitely change the size. That may not be critical: I can always machine it down. It is a problem if it substantially changes the hole spacing. I measured five different dimensions on this to compare it to the original print, and determine the changes that happen during casting, and the bolt-to-bolt dimension was within the range of the other dimensions, so apparently it didn't change enough to matter.

[favoritebean]

Revel is cute.

In LA, there is a shop that sells pieces where they meld rocks with molten metals. Sometimes, they use aluminum, sometimes a more rosy colored metal. The results look similar to how yours did after drying in the sand, save with quartz crystals attached to look like a human made geode. They sell for about $75-100, and are becoming trendy art. Maybe you can create your own and sell them with any leftover aluminum once you are done with working on the Spitfire.

[basefinder]

When I was about 13 I got a wood burning kit and I quickly realized the wood burning tool was really a soldering iron with different tips. I used to have fun just melting solder and letting it drip onto the garage floor, where it splattered into interesting shapes. I hadn't thought about that in years, until your post.

[kadenza]

I love these posts depicting screwing around with molten metal... I used to cast bullets with my dad out in the yard and it brings back many pleasant memories. Also, important life lessons about metal things that look like they might be cool enough to touch, but aren't.

[randomdreams]

I used to do a bunch of work with glass, and it is even worse for not warning you about being hot until you're already badly burnt. (Mostly because this was very delicate work at eye height, and a lot of people doing it tend to use their mouths as third hands.)

[amaebi]

I had forgotten the word flash, which I think is beautiful. Thank you.

[sravakavarn]

there is so much lavender out here in the West, I have seen since Utah.