All hull panels glued up, and the helper gets a little R&R on the building jig, while dressed in her ex-flower girl dress.
Bulb casting day, and here's the set up. The mold is up on the horses to shorten the travel distance for the lead in the pipe, the "chiminea" is blocked up to get about the right height for the chimney, and the cast iron pot from eBay is hanging from a stout board securely clamped to the patio cover. I dumped two bags of sand all around the possible spill area to dampen any splashing, just in case.
I pre-loaded the mold with as many raw ingots (mine were shaped in muffin pans, I think) as would fit, and this may not have been a good idea for a through-a-hole pour. I haven't un-molded the casting yet, but I think there may be some voids where the lead cooled too soon as it entered the middle pour hole.
And here's the aftermath. It took lots of firewood, about three hours time, I charred one of my horses, cracked my chiminea (it was tired anyway), but I think I got close to 170 pounds into the mold. Things that could go better would be a big gas heat source (more heat, consistently), a brush-burner type torch to get the upper ingots heated, and a bigger feed pipe to the mold. I used 1/8" brass pipe because it was available and easy to get taps for, but I had to heat it a lot to get the lead to flow through it.
And as a break from the foundry work, this morning I made the last of my hull panel cuts, set up the jig molds, and dropped in the hull bottom panel just see how things look. So far pretty good, although I suspect that the "V" cut shouldn't be a straight-sided "V" but more of a concave-out pair of curves that are just tangent where they meet at the 108" point. We'll see, I suppose. I have my P&S hull panels cut and leaning to the right in this pic. I'm going to try to get the transom cut this week, so I can stitch things together before leaving for a family visit next week.
All hull panels glued up, and the helper gets a little R&R on the building jig, while dressed in her ex-flower girl dress.
Bulb casting day, and here's the set up. The mold is up on the horses to shorten the travel distance for the lead in the pipe, the "chiminea" is blocked up to get about the right height for the chimney, and the cast iron pot from eBay is hanging from a stout board securely clamped to the patio cover. I dumped two bags of sand all around the possible spill area to dampen any splashing, just in case.
I pre-loaded the mold with as many raw ingots (mine were shaped in muffin pans, I think) as would fit, and this may not have been a good idea for a through-a-hole pour. I haven't un-molded the casting yet, but I think there may be some voids where the lead cooled too soon as it entered the middle pour hole.
And here's the aftermath. It took lots of firewood, about three hours time, I charred one of my horses, cracked my chiminea (it was tired anyway), but I think I got close to 170 pounds into the mold. Things that could go better would be a big gas heat source (more heat, consistently), a brush-burner type torch to get the upper ingots heated, and a bigger feed pipe to the mold. I used 1/8" brass pipe because it was available and easy to get taps for, but I had to heat it a lot to get the lead to flow through it.
And as a break from the foundry work, this morning I made the last of my hull panel cuts, set up the jig molds, and dropped in the hull bottom panel just see how things look. So far pretty good, although I suspect that the "V" cut shouldn't be a straight-sided "V" but more of a concave-out pair of curves that are just tangent where they meet at the 108" point. We'll see, I suppose. I have my P&S hull panels cut and leaning to the right in this pic. I'm going to try to get the transom cut this week, so I can stitch things together before leaving for a family visit next week.
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