The Furnace .
This is a picture of the furnace after the melt..
Projects - Flowerpot Foundry
The Flower-pot Foundry
This was put together and run up in about 3 hours from odds found round the house. It was just a test to see if it was possible to melt metal in a flower pot. It WAS.........
I placed a 10" / 250mm flower pot on a couple of bricks. I placed 4" of 15mm copper pipe into one end of a 15mm elbow. Into the other end of the elbow I placed a 3 foot length of copper tube. I placed a bit of garden hose on the end of the long length of tube and taped a balloon pump to the end of that. I placed the shorter end of this setup in the hole at the bottom od the flower pot. I had an old frying pan for a lid.
This gave me a small furnace with a method of producing a draught.
I half filled the furnace with charcoal and lit it. I placed a small 3 1/2" / 80mm flowerpot in the furnace with a small piece of steel over the hole. This was my crucible. I placed a couple of bits of scrap "pot" metal in the crucible, put more charcoal round the flowerpot and put the lid on.
I let the fire get up, and gave the bellows a good pumped every now and again. I was very surprised to find molten metal in the bottom of my "crucible" after about 20 minutes. I added more pot metal and knocked up the sand box "drag" in about three minutes when I realised I had molten metal and nothing to mould. The first pattern I could lay my hand on was a small flower pot saucer. (Lower left in picture above).
The Castings.
This is the casting and the pattern. This was produced in an open cast. I just pushed the pattern in the drag, lited it out and poured. The bottom of the casting is round. This was caused by the surface tension in the liquid metal. In a closed mould with a sprue this should not be a problem. This was done in an open mould in builders sand. I am so impressed with the quality of this very cobbled together casting that the next one I hope for great improvements.
The Equipment .
The crucible did not suvive. It cracked during the pour and the bottom then fell out. The furnace has a large crack down one side but its still burning ( 6 hours later ), and so will get and inspection on the morning to see if its fit for another firing.
Tomorrow.
I plan to visit a couple of local foundries to see if I can buy some refractory cement ( heat resistant for the gingery foundry ) and some green sand. I also would like to see tempered sand and possibly see the real thing done on a serious scale.
