Maximizing Dollars for Scrap Aluminum

I was not happy with getting $0.70 a lbs for clean cast aluminum after spending hours removing bolts and steel inserts and decided to do something about it.

Three glorious years of backyard metal casing.

My 8 lb fish mold is a copy if this mold, in fact I purchase this mold them made some modifications using auto body filler - Bondo. http://scrapmetalforum.com/3wp3rj6

The case eagle is a Bondo copy attached to a wood backing used to cast book ends, the McCullock logo was cut off an old chainsaw fuel tanks then cast in aluminum. I have other patterns for casting scuba weight molds.

Ok we went from $0.70 cents a lb for scrap cast aluminum to well over $10.00 a lb sometimes even higher depending on the product we made.

I use Petro Bond sand which needs to be replaced and I would have to make a trip back to my home province B.C. to get more no one locally uses the stuff.

Some samples of my work. We recycle!

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z...ned_aglery.jpg

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z...glepattern.png

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z.../McCulloch.jpg

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z...isggallery.jpg

Regards
Gustavus

What is the last item?

Where do you sell your works of art?? Mike

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Originally Posted by miked

What is the last item?

Where do you sell your works of art?? Mike

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Mike I have not sold anything in the past couple of years, I used the largest online auction as my venue, as we're all aware there have been some degrading changes made to rules and fees. We'll leave it at that.

Should I replenish my supply of Pertrobond and start casting again, I will host my own site then use Ozcommerce as my store.

Plenty of people use green sand which uses water and clay as a binder fro the sand, petrobond is idiot proof and very safe to use for the inexperienced foundry man. they use oil and clay as binders for the sand.

Lots of information at backyard metal casting, however there are things they promote which I do not approve of. The use of a metal crucible will contaminate molten aluminum, hot metals become solvents, ions will migrate in this case iron will contaminate your aluminum making it brittle.

Choice of feedstock, window frams and beer cans, not. Use a good source of scrap cast aluminum my favorites are rims, cylinder heads and blocks.

Regards
Gustavus

Dang how big is your furnace if you can put an engine block in it?

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Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Dang how big is your furnace if you can put an engine block in it?

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I cut the aluminum engine blocks into smaller bits that will fit into the crucible.

I have several different size crucibles, the smallest one I have holds 10 lbs of aluminum, while the largest I have holds 40 lbs.

The furnace is out of storage right now to melt some silver into an anode used in a electro-refining cell, one of my winter projects.

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z...n/100_4533.jpg

I so want to build me one of those. Ive been reading alot of stuff on other sites on how to build one I just need the time and money to do it. Maybe Ill make that my winter project build me a furnace.

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Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

I so want to build me one of those. Ive been reading alot of stuff on other sites on how to build one I just need the time and money to do it. Maybe Ill make that my winter project build me a furnace.

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You will not regret making a small furnace to cast your own goods or those you make to sell. It paid for me 14" x 40" metal lathe and a bunch of tooling.

As luck goes sometimes, I made a trip to the city to purchase my refractory when I found that the supplier of this had just tossed a truck load of a high temperature castable refractory into the bin. The bags had been wet and some lumps had formed on the bottom, the manager said I could have all I could pack onto my truck.

I poured the floor first, let is set up, then cut the hole for the tubing where the burner was to enter the furnace, set a plastic garbage can inside dead center then filled it with sand so that it would hold its shape when I poured the outside refractory.

Once the refractory set up removed the sand from insdie the garbage can, them pulled it out and put it back into the house for the wife before she missed it.

Before pouring the refractory set a sheet of cerwoll to the outside of the blue drum, once I began pouring the refractory tapped the sides of the drum so that it would settle out any air pockets.

For the lid drilled some holes from the sides then inserted some large spikes to hold the refractory in place once it set up.


Once you start, you want to push your limits, I'm a Ford flathead V8 fanatic -,eventually I want to cast some high performance aluminum heads and some tri power intake manifolds.

Hope you build your furnace, it could even come in handy for processing scrap, I also use mine to incinerate IC's removed from circuit boards, before milling them in a home made ball mill.

From a 1000 load of boards recovered 3.85 lbs of silver, which is sitting inside my furnace waiting to be cast into an anode.