It took some time around having to finish homework and kid things and then the stupid rain… but finally, we got the foundry finished and cured, and today we did our first test batch of aluminum!

This is a very basic, inexpensive foundry, mainly so that we can test our preferences.  It’s a simple steel bucket with plaster of Paris and sand for the refractory, and that’s just normal household charcoal.  The steel pipe is connected to a longer PVC pipe with a blow dryer at the end, acting as the bellows.

All told, we did about ten cans to start with.  I have some excellent video footage of a few interim points (pulling the dross, pouring the molten aluminum), but those will have to wait until later.  This is what we got out of them:

So, those ten cans came out to about 110 grams, which is about 11 grams per can.  That’s not bad, considering most of my initial designs wouldn’t weigh more than 30 grams on the outside.

Now I need to run out and get lighter fluid so we can do it again tomorrow.

Things are happening!  The polymer clay gets here tomorrow as well, so the proper sculpting can begin!