Home Foundry Tools

 These are some tools that I built out of some scrap steel I had laying around.

I built this frame out of an old bed frame that I recovered in the flood of 08.  The sheet metal bottom is leftover from the sandblaster build.  The wheels were given to me some time ago.  I have no idea what the hell those wheels went to.

The furnace itself is made of a 5 gal bucket that I cut and mixed up some refractory (fire-clay mortar, bentonite, and perlite) to insulate the walls and lid.  The refractory is starting to flake just after a couple firings but I wanted to test a few things out before I went all out on a furnace.  I plan on making a new furnace with firebricks and mortar if this one tests out OK.

Pouring Hoop?

The pouring hoop  is made with some black pipe that came with the house (it wasn’t attached when we moved in) and some leftover re-bar.  The hoop is made of some leftover 2inch X 1/8inch flat from the sandblaster cabinet build.

Tongs made from Leftover re-bar and 2inch X 1/8inch flat

Crucible is a commercial unit from Mcmaster-Carr

Pouring hoop and crucible

Demonstrating placing the crucible into the pouring hoop.

The tongs in the background are made of re-bar.

Fan is a leftover fan pulled out of the dash of a demolition derby car and the housing is made of leftover sheet metal .

The plumbing stuff was bought from the local hardware store and Mcmaster-Carr

The tanks are old propane tanks that were flooded with water to purge any leftover gas.

I put removable handles on the cart so I could move it around like a wheel barrel.  I chose not to make the handles permanent, because I did not want to trip over them while I was working with molten metal.