Bringing metalcasting to the backyard.The lure of melting metal and forming it into useful objects is too great for many people to resist. After all, that's how many metalcasters ended up in the business today. But there is a small section of the population that felt the same pull toward molten metal and chose not to follow it. People in this group chose other careers for one reason or another, but still needed a way to satisfy their metalcasting urges. That's what happened to Lionel Oliver II, a suburban New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of native, before he realized he had a clay flower pot, a coffee can and the ability to easily secure aluminum. Out of that, Oliver's backyard metalcasting facility was born. Oliver said his lather had dabbled dab·ble v. dab·bled, dab·bling, dab·bles v.tr. To splash or spatter with or as if with a liquid: "The moon hung over the harbor dabbling the waves with gold" in metalcasting a little bit, casting lead fishing sinkers. That's when Oliver started to take an interest and came across a few" hooks that helped him out. As it turns out, the more Oliver started melting metal with his crude backyard set up, he found more people like him. In 2000, he set up his Web site, www.backyardmetalcasting.com, which serves as a message hoard and instruction booklet for working with molten metal at home. The site averages about 300-400 visits a day and draws hobbyists from around the world. "I started back in 1999 with a furnace built from a clay flower pot and a coffee can as the melting crucible crucible, vessel in which a substance is heated to a high temperature, as for fusing or calcining. The necessary properties of a crucible are that it maintain its mechanical strength and rigidity at high temperatures and that it not react in an undesirable way with where I would melt small amounts of aluminum," Oliver said. "I did it more as a novelty type of, 'Hey I can melt metal,' type of thing. After that, I began improving my foundry and casting actual objects. The most ambitious of which is the metal turning lathe a lathe used by turners to shape their work. See also: Turning ." Oliver has now progressed to melting with furnaces using solid fuel (charcoal charcoal, substance obtained by partial burning or carbonization (destructive distillation) of organic material. It is largely pure carbon. The entry of air during the carbonization process is controlled so that the organic material does not turn to ash, as in a or wood), propane propane, CH3CH2CH3, colorless, gaseous alkane. It is readily liquefied by compression and cooling. It melts at −189.9°C; and boils at −42.2°C;. gas and even waste oil (used cooking oil and motor oil). His new project is a small iron melting cupola cupola /cu·po·la/ (koo´pah-lah) cupula. cu·po·la n. A cup-shaped or domelike structure. cupola cupula. furnace. When it is finished, it will be 4-in. tall with a 7-in. bore. He is hoping to utilize 10 lbs. of iron per charge to cast model steam and gasoline engine gasoline engine: see internal-combustion engine. gasoline engine Most widely used form of internal-combustion engine, found in most automobiles and many other vehicles. components as well as decorative pieces. Not bad for a self-taught hobbyist. "I have no friends or family interested in metalcasting at this scale so everything I do, I have to figure out myself or by researching the topic," Oliver said. "Fortunately, hobby metalcasting isn't that difficult, and once you know the basics and put a little study into it, you can design and improve just about any of it pretty easily. "Metalcasting is growing in popularity, and Fm glad," he continued. "When I first started the Web site, I had a joke that the site's goal was to make metalcasting a household word." While metalcasting might not be a household word just yet, it has now become a household hobby. |
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