Mud Lathe

[Pete O]

I fired up the furnace and melted most of a Range Rover transfer case, a coffee pot, the sprues from my last casting, any other chunks of aluminium I could get my hands on...eventually the crucible was full of liquid aluminium so I went and got my wife to come and observe from a safe distance as safety officer. As I lifted the crucible out of the furnace it occurred to me that it was a tad heavy. I put it down and scraped the muck off the top, attached the pouring business and picked it up again. I could not lift the thing up to the trestles where I had the molds!!! Now I see why people make things like pouring trolleys (another future project). I lifted the smaller mould down to the floor and poured it- could just manage it at floor level- then had to get my longsuffering wife to help me lift the big mold down to the floor. Getting my fingers out from under the edge of the mold, it dropped that little way and landed sharply. Oh well, crucible full of just-still-liquid metal, better just pour the thing and see how it goes.
   
It was now about 10:30pm so I left everything to cool for the night while I went to bed to worry about it.
Broke the castings out in the morning and they were better than I could have hoped. I thoughtt the metal might have cooled too much while I was stuffing about to fill the larger mold properly, especially as nothing had appeared at the vent holes. Not so, the cavity was full and both castings were successful.