First ingot from home made forge

[Lorgar]

You can cast Al directly into ordinary red brickies sand (and I have) but add 5% (by weight) Bentonite.

Got the sand, will check out the Bentonite. Cheers.

[Lorgar]

try and get the highest volume to surface area offcuts you can, stuff like aluminium flat bars and solid bar will be more efficient to smelt than cans and thin stuff

Doing the rounds to a few recyclers today to try and find a supplier of bars. Not going to bother with cans again I don't think.

[Lorgar]

Fortune smiles.

Found a scrap metal joint 10 minutes from home that sells aluminium for $4 a kg

[Noisydad]

It's a type of clay and comes in 25kg bags - get it farm supply stores. It's used as a stock feed additive

They feed them clay?

You would be amazed and maybe even shocked at what you can get cows to eat when it's all blended in a feed mixer wagon!

[Noisydad]

Here's some pics of bits and pieces from my back yard foundry that may be helpful...

Some tools I use...sand rammer, vent spike, ingate cutters, pouring sprue former, mould repair trowel, seedling tray sand sieve, pattern rapping spanner, sock of graphite powder for shaking over patterns to stop sand from sticking.

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Two piece flask for making your mould in. The two halves are accurately located with pins at either end. You'll end up making lots of flasks.

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A match plate pattern of a crankshaft mounted oil slinger ring for a 1945 Ruston Hornsby 2XHR diesel engine I restored.

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Match plate patterns for a throttle handle and bracket for my big 1947 John Deere GM two cylinder tractor.

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8" x 2" and 10" x 2" wheel patterns.

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Some things I've cast - 4' and 6" model steam engine flywheels, reloading press frame and my new invention spouting brackets to repair sagging spouting without taking it all off the house.

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Ingot moulds made from 2" channel iron for pouring left over molten Al into.

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[Lorgar]

Two piece flask for making your mould in. The two halves are accurately located with pins at either end. You'll end up making lots of flasks.

If I can find where the hell I put my power drill I might get to making one

[Lorgar]

Here she is in action.

Glowing hot crucible, just dropped the ali bars in.

Burning forge

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[Noisydad]

Cool!

[squirrelhunter]

Never would have thought you'd get that much heat out of bucket of sand if I hadn't seen the pictures.