Alloy Metal Casting #2 (Lost Foam)

Last night we readied our trusty home made blast furnace, filled the propane tank, busted out the leather protection gear and prepared to melt alloy for the second, yet long awaited time.

(Foam Carvings)

Over the weekend, started preparation to do our second ever alloy metal casting. We started carving a piece to cast which of course was a turtle (NOTE: Ike's favorite animal). The alloy sculpture starts out as a block of styrofoam or wax which is carved into your desired piece to cast (affectionately named: "Turty" which is Ike's name for baby turtle). Before packing the foam piece in a mixture of lightly dampened sand and clay, we glued on additional pieces of foam called the "sprue", gates and vents for proper flow of the metal. Sprue is where the liquid alloy is poured and vents is where the alloy will travel through to properly fill the entire void left from the burned foam. Proper gating and vents will eliminate air pockets left by under cuts to ensure metal flows to all parts of the void.


(Ike preparing the green sand)

(Ivan and neighbor Peter)

(Melting found alloy)

(Most dangerous part is removing and pouring the alloy from crucible)

(Don't trip!... 1220º liquid alloy)

(Pouring into the sprue)

(10 minutes later, we dump the flask and remove the sculpture to be trimmed & polished)

(One turtle sculpture in the rough)

"The turtle emerges from it's extrusive basalt & pumice earthen home of finely crystalline, glassy igneous rock resulting from centuries of volatiles activity"... or simply we dumped the hot ass clump of metal and sand into bucket.

(Final turtle, lightly brushed w/ wire wheel)

(Boy and his turtle)

In the end, you can see it was a successful casting. We will continue to learn better ways of casting and refining the technique as we experiment on sculpting, gating, sand / clay / water mixtures; venting; pouring; packing sand; polishing; etc...

Check in for more castings and family events coming soon!