Metal Foundry Frequently Asked Questions: The Why and How I melt metal at home

let's talk foundry stuff real quick [Music] really cold outside I don't want to do anything out there so I think I'm gonna take this opportunity and answer a bunch of questions that I commonly get in the comments hopefully this will help some you guys out a lot of the questions or comments kind of follow general themes so I'm gonna go through them and try to cast a wide net these won't be specific questions what kind of general general ones if I don't answer your question I suggest asking below and I'll answer them or also join the discord server there's a link in the description and your questions can be answered usually by people smarter than me so you know that's that's worth looking into first general thing I get is a lot of questions about foundry furnace design how it's going to hold up how you want to build it that kind of thing I'll explain that while looking at the furnaces multiple people have asked how these say tonight is holding up it changed color when I was doing the aluminum bronze I think that's sort of the common occurrence I know things will turn yellow Kol turns yellow if you melt brass that kind of thing so this sort of turn color still it doesn't look like a lot of the heat gets all the way out here because that that say tonight hasn't turned this chalky color that it usually does but overall it's not too bad I'm thinking my full blast death mode is a little too hot because I have this ring of glassy stuff which I think might this this just looks like glass that might be my crucible vit refine the whole crucible has turned a glass on the outside so yeah might be a little bit too hot although chirpy tells me that might be borax because of the borax flux so this this brick which I've been using as a plinth not coated in say tonight it has developed a crack so this has a thing on top of it and it gets full blast coming right in through that the hole there though the fire hole I think it's called at we're that hits it right there and as you can see 2800 degree brick totally fine suffer the crack there's like leaves and junk in here not cool also the say night sometimes it cracks away I think there's some expansion and contraction of the bricks on the heats and cools and this coating is very thin so yeah don't be surprised if that happens you say night otherwise it looks pretty good I mean it's it's handling the heat it's not crumbling apart it's it just turned kind of yellowy the steel top is held pretty well these handles have held pretty well if I flip it over you see the same color changes happened down here and again the the say tonight has gotten a little crumbly with the different bricks also the steel has turned some pretty pretty colors pretty cool I have the the lid far away from the other thing because I'm still cleaning I clean up after every project that became the handle on the hammer that brings us to this the original one if you remember this was a king of random plaster sand mini metal foundry that died so I redid it in castable factory cement from Menards people have asked me a few things on that video it's my most watched video which I kind of don't like because I like my later videos a lot better but the cast more refractory lid has held up very well it's a bit crumbly but not terrible this bottom part is held up exceedingly well if you remember this is the stuff I used from Menards castable refractory cement one of the comments I get your walls are too thin this material doesn't insulate for crap like it's terrible it's worse than plaster so thin walls don't really matter so much because it's garbage anyway another point people ask if they can use normal cement normal concrete like quikrete I would say no no do not use quikrete or concrete this is designed to handle the stress the the heat the expansion the contraction this can handle it normal concrete not designed handle 2,000 degrees also normal concrete can absorb and hold water and you don't want water or moisture anywhere near it so even this you have to keep this out of the rain otherwise you know you can have flash boiling and kaboom you know with normal concrete so don't don't use normal concrete I wouldn't recommend it cast more refractory cement though look look and most of this damage is from charcoal not propane so yeah cast more factory cement do it if you're wondering where to get cast the water factory cement that the good stuff this I got it at Menards not every home-improvement store has castable whatever cast over factories about not every has it but I will put a link in the description where you can get cast a light and a bunch of other ones including say tonight and even these fire bricks that are in this one although not these fire bricks I got these fire breaks so differently I'll put that in there too I'll put everything there just fill it with links just make it rain links cool huh yeah I haven't recorded that part yet so I don't know what he said don't trust him second comments I get usually about the burner here it is if you watch the burner build videos this is like an Oliver upwind burner and this is a bunch of crap that I duct-taped to it this works pretty well although there's a more popular one up the rail burner or whatever make one of those don't don't make this contraption but this works awesome for me basically I can operate it in a few modes there's sort of a low low power mode without the force there with the holes open and pretty high high pressure I do not have a regulator I do have a regulator I don't have a gauge so I don't know what pressure and running but it's usually like maximum so 30 psi when I'm melting copper the max power mode hairdryer on holes open and burner on max is pretty intense it almost doesn't seem safe and it's deafening but it works very well but like I said don't don't don't build this burner build someone else is the rail burner do that one there's much less duct tape and stolen hair equipment on a rail burner next comment people asked about the flare or the commented about the flare I you do not need to use a flare in a furnace the furnace kind of acts as a flare and it works really well once it's heated up the reason I run the flare on this is because again this burner not super fantastic I can run it wide open before everything heats up and now lets a heat up a lot quicker that's why I run the flare the flare cutter stabilizes it while it's cold once it's hot it probably wouldn't matter at all but I've made the hole big enough for the flare I'm not gonna take it off once it heats up because it's gonna be super hot and yes it starting to look kind of cruddy because it's burning hot and I take it out of the furnace so ya don't always follow what you see people doing on the internet just in general I am NOT a professional just because I'm using a flare doesn't mean you should always use a flare and also doesn't I don't know why I shouldn't use a flare I'm just doing it generally because look that this this is how I operate see cuz yeah yeah I duct-taped a piece of square steel to this to make sure that duct tape didn't fall apart when it got hot that that's my engineering just you really want to ask me questions about this anyway moving on the next comment I get a lot and this is on the old foundry tools video always about the crucible tongs these are my crucible tongs they're bent like this so I can fit it between the crucible in the furnace wall go underneath and lift it up and everyone seems to think crucible is going to fall out of this well only once as the crucible falling out of this and it was a crucible that this was not made for I made this for the big crucible my big aluminum one and whenever I pick it up it holds it really tight and I can turn it more than 90 degrees and it won't fall out because it's wedged in there the one time it did fall out was the copper crucible which is too small and it doesn't fit in these tongs so what I do I set this on the concrete and I stomp on it until it's close enough to hold that smaller crucible that's the only one that fell out and I was like doing this to try to get the last bit of aluminum bronze out of it when I was doing the ingots that's the only time the crucibles falling out of these so this design is very simple and very effective stop saying it won't hold because it holds except the wrong the wrong thing it won't hold the wrong thing very well but it holds the right thing very well next comments recently made this sweet hammer by recently I made last week it was literally the last thing I posted and I met got a lot of comments about the handle everything it was hiding his shoulder how it shouldn't have a shoulder I've never made a handle so I didn't know that well see what happens if it splinters it splinters I'll make a video about fixing it so far I've been hammering a lot of stuff with it just to kind of test it out and the head sometimes gets a tiny bit of rock but it works it works pretty well next man Conrad seems to be about the the alloy itself the aluminum bronze being too soft do not confuse aluminum bronze with brass you can get brass hammers and they're basically meant to be like soft soft hammers like they got a lot of weight and soft another cool thing brass doesn't have the bounce like a steel hammer it acts a little more like a dead blow hammer this kind of does too although brass will stay soft I mean it work hardens a bit but not much so it will always be soft and eventually it'll mushroom out aluminium bronze when it first comes out it's kind of soft and it work hardens really quick that's why I was hammering the faces while I hammered both of them quite a bit to make them nice and hard and when aluminium bronze work hardens it is extremely hard we're talking like steel kinds of hardness maybe not hardened steel hardness but very hard so not quite like brass and you can buy aluminium bronze tools and any special tools I don't mean like a soft aluminium bronze hammer I mean like yes a liminal bronze hammered but also wrenches and stuff like really really hard wrenches and the reason they do that is because aluminium bronze is non-magnetic and non-sparking so they're very useful but they make it out of aluminium bronze and not blast because brass is too weak that's why they make aluminium bronze stuff I didn't make a steel hammer which had been at least probably better than an aluminium bronze hammer but I didn't make a steel hammer because I can't make a steel hammer I can make aluminium bronze I'll have to update you on this on the long-term the more I've used it but alumina bronze should be tough enough tough tough enough that's a funny tough enough tough you know if tough enough moving on people always ask me where to get aluminum scrapyard sometimes scrap yards will let you buy stuff or just take stuff cans not a very good place to get aluminium it's fairly pure so magnesium in it not very good extrusions gets you very pure aluminium like I get used a screen door extrusions cast aluminium check Craigslist for car wheels alloy car wheels the the tons of them out there also mower engines like mower lawnmower engines a lot of those have aluminium parts sometimes magnesium be careful you can tell if it's magnesium if you clean it put vinegar on it if it's magnesium it'll bubble do not try to melt magnesium at home bad idea so I'm gonna see the last we were to get zinc new wheel weights yep also roto metals calm they sell zinc brass is like everywhere if it's ornamental it's yellow brass if it's plumbing is red brass do not combine them copper copper plumbing wires you know where to find copper cast iron good luck melting cast iron at home people do it yeah oh yeah people do it but I I wouldn't suggest it steel you can't cast steel it's pretty tough major foundries use huge induction furnaces and there's a lot of work that goes into casting steel forged steel it's easier to forge it the general shop update the van behind me don't look spoilers that the video is not all edited on that yet so people eyes what I'm gonna Forge probably hooks hooks first swd we've the other guy made the hammer sent me these cool hooks Forge hooks that he made so that's cool thank you very much for that some people have asked me where they can send stuff I'm working on it P o box I'm working on it of Tsun Tsun but I'm working on it multiple people surprised me multiple people asked me about a patreon I do not have a patreon at least not right now again hold your horses I'm working on it new year new stuff more stuff is coming I'm working on it if you absolutely must send some stranger money I would suggest a charity Salvation Army something like that I don't know cool cool it is freezing out here so I'm gonna go inside and warm up and then try to find a garage heater that's not too expensive because man is it cold everything's freezing solid I literally mean that I left my coffee mug out here this is an attached attached garage and my coffee throws it froze I had a coffee sickle I know I know I live in Wisconsin I don't want to signed up for it but I can still complain about it [Music]

Channel: Paul's Garage

Views: 17,962

Rating: 4.9732442 out of 5

Keywords: melting metal at home, metal foundry, how to make a foundry, melting metal, propane foundry, propane burner, Paul's Garage, pauls garage, Metal Casting, how to melt metal

Id: YvlBEhbRPDk

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018