Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Scrap to Sheet

The easy way...


I've been tediously torching my fine silver scraps, which takes forever with my little butane torches.  I know, I know, I have the big torches but don't have the tanks anymore and have not bothered, basically.

But I got lucky and bought this wonderful little melting oven from a retiring jeweler friend, bless his heart and his skill.

The tricky part was figuring out how to keep it going.  It didn't trip the breakers but I finally figured out the outlet had a reset, oh, so I unplugged the chest freezer and used it's outlet, which seemed to do the trick.  It's amazing what an electrical idiot can figure out by trial and error.

You put all the little scraps in the cup and wait until it gets hot as shit, or 1800 degrees, same, same.  Then you freak out a little and pour the molten metal from the black cup into the little ingot mold, right.  It's like pouring milk into a thimble, not easy and it spilled out all over the table, luckily on the soldering board I put down under the mold.

Here's the first ingot released from it's mold.

How freaking cool is that?  I learned you have to pour it all at once and not try to top it off, it cools quickly.

I rinsed off the ingot and sent it through the rolling mill a couple of times, here it is.  It's still got lots of trips through the mill before it gets to the gauge I need for further projects.


Much better than the old method, of course, you need the oven.

Fun stuff in a geeky chick sort of way.

Smiles








4 comments:

  1. You are so funny and entertaining.
    Love it!
    D

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  2. Yes! Melting scrap with even a big torch is a major pain in the patooty. And with no rolling mill, flattening it enough to do anything with it is an exercise in futility. I want to try some broomstraw casting with my next batch of scrap.
    BTW, cool little crucible!
    Susan

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  3. Susan,
    Well, too bad you live so damn far away, I'd share my rolling mill, not like it's gonna wear out and we can dance around to some good tunes.

    The furnace malfunctioned and I've taken it to the motor doctor, see if they can fix it, it's sooooo sweet.

    I love broomstick casting, very pretty results.

    Thanks,

    Suz

    ReplyDelete