sandcasting question

On Sat, 1 Nov 2008 09:56:09 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

Yeah. The last book on that was a few years ago, Langland's _From Clay to Bronze_. It convinced me that bronze sculpting was too much work. ;)

-- Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for. -- Earl Warren

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:07:44 -0500, the infamous Tim Wescott scrawled the following:

-- Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for. -- Earl Warren

Tim Mc Creight's book Practical Casting is pretty detailed and comprehensive. ISBN 0-9615984-0-9. Also this is one of my favourite web sites

You don't even need to coat with plaster. Make a model in foam, cover with sand & pour. There is a particular foam to use & I don't think it's Styrofoam - one of the insulation foams. One would think that the foam would melt & the sand collapse before the metal could fill, but it doesn't. IIRC, you don't get the same detail in the casting as you do with green sand.

Bob

Sheesh, Tim McCreight is everywhere (at least in the jewelry -book- writing arena. I helped with a tiny artcle in Metalsmith mag by him about my specialty way back around '92 somewhere, and have seen the name on lots of books I never read .

Yeah, I almost ordred some Petrobond from Budget but thought I'd research a little more , mostly because I was curious about green sand and if it came finer grit than 'normal' oil sand .

What I'm going to be making are bronze conforming mold sets , matching male & female repousse forming molds for copper jewelry parts. I've made this sort of thing with nylon female dies and steel or bronze punches , or plastic steel sets, but we need something tougher than the nylon, or plastic steel, or zinc, but at the same time a solution much less expensive that conventional grapghite electrode edm-made die parts. The client claims to want hundreds of mold sets and says they have to be cheap. I already have the inexpensive flat part blanking die technology going, so these molds will take pre-cut flat blanks and shape them in a press. That's the way I decided to go , over another way: forming the parts with the same kind of mold , but starting with a larger piece of sheet and basically drawing the shape in the middle, leaving a flat flange around the draw, and trimming in a modified cheapo (oh but very skillfully made, lol !) blanking die. The advantage being the cheaper faster blanking stage of the former scenario. Lots of potential bugaboos with the guys down in mexico stamping designs into the flat parts , then forming them in the bronze molds . But it all juuust miiiight work out

eventually ...

blog off

Dar

I've bought from the man - nice guy. He brought it to my company instead of shipping. Now I live back in Texas. Still have my Petrobond in a waist high drum. I was into casting - just have to get back and work on it more. Never had much time to do it before.

Martin

Petrobond has resin within for fine smooth edges. It flows and fills in the sides as the metal flows and fills the design.

Martin

Here are some photos of the Iron Guild of MA College of Art doing a night time pour on Halloween night.

Errol Groff

My recommendation is petrobond. You can view a short video using petrobond on YouTube at