melt metal in your basements?

Hhave you ever wanted to melt and cast metal with the convenient luxury of being able to do so yourself in your own house? well guess what? Now you can! In this week's episode, Thracymacus builds his own foundry! let's pay attention and see how it's done. so, first, using steel duct of about a 14" circumfrance or so, cunstruct 3 sectiones of tubing in the mannor indicated in the first 2 of the accompaniying illustrations. note the fashion with which the handels and legs have been bolted on. theses segments will serve as the shell of the oven, so it is important that they are steel, and that they are fairly durable in nature. one wouldn't want one's foundry to be assosiated with leaky couldran bottom syndrome, would one?

Anyway, this is a pretty serrious piece of equipment made from serrious compnents. inside the steel shell there will be surrounded by a heating coil, a serries of heat bricks - special and holding it all together will be a casing of some sort of super heat insulating cement - forget exactly what, but i can try to find out. anyway, picture 3 is a detail of the heating coil. thracymacus had to do a whole lot of hunting down to get all these specialty parts. the heating bricks came courtesy of an "inside agent", i believe. the steel duct was purchased from a nicer hardware store. and thbricks designed to withstand extreme heat (the oven gets up to about 2000 degrees F or so) - which will house a central chamber and the heating coil, and then insulating the whole thinge heating coil from a kiln-maker. there also wound up being a temperature gauge which came from some oven distribution center and took a lot of looking for (the oven runs at 220 volts and is super high wattage).

In picture 4 the 4 heating bricks which will go inside the middle section of the oven are shown with the groves for the heating coil cut into them. the fire bricks were especialy difficult to cut. in the end, drill and chisel were required to make the appropriate cuts.

The next picture shows the lower segment of the oven. it has been filled with the special concrete and is drying in a wooden jig.

next cut to picture 6 which shows the middle piece drying. note that there are wires coming out of it for the heating coil... i'm sure they must be some super special wires.
anyway, after all the pieces had dried for a couple of days, it's time for final assembly. first, it took quite a while to locate a good switch, like i said earlier. we burnt out one that wasn't powerfull enough. but eventrualls we found one that works. you can see it in the shot of the completed unit. anyway, it was also a little tricky to wire the switch, but we got that too. so, next step, let it cure by plugging it in and running it at a low temperature for a few days. seemed to work pretty well. next step, plug it in at high temperature and see what happens. seems cool. alright, sweet, we have a foundry capable of melting aluminum and bronze and maybe some other soft metals!

oh, so basically we obviously couldn't just build a foundry and then not actualy melt some metal. we had a bunch of wasted bike parts made out of aluminium just laying around, so we put them in our crucible (oh yeah, our crucible was fabricated out of some super thick steel tubing we got somehow), and put the crucible in the oven and fired it up. let's let the remaining pictures tell that story.


i couldn't quite get the order right for the last few so i hope you can bear with it. Liquid Metal!!!

screen printing

lot's of people love to screen print, and it's no wonder why - wearable art has got to be one of the easiest and most practical (i e usable) ways to get exposure for an image/design/idea/whatever. personally, screenprinting is one of my favourite crafts to regularly do. there are tons of resources out there for the budding screen printer (various punkrock/diy books or zines - one particular collection i like is "making stuff and doing things") so i won't get too specific with the technical side of things, just highlight a few specific bits.

The number one thing i'll point out is that this is something you can do with a relatively minimal amount of equipment. here's what i had when i started out: 1 really old screen that i found in a box shomewhere; a portable clamp on light; a 300 watt light bulb; the basic chemical kit that everybody uses (dazo speedball or something like that - any reputable art store should be able to help you get it), a squeegie; and a toothbrush. a couple of further notes on this setup: if you were a pro or want to go all out or read the intructions that come with the kit, it will tell you you need a special full spectrum screenprinting-specific light bulb - you don't actually need this. i've used 250 watts before - it's ok. 300 watts does just fine. blabh blah, also, don't use a toothbrush, get the actual screen printing brush - it's much better (larger, stiffer).
Ok, so the first thing to do is come up with yer design, and then have it printed out on a transparency, or just draw it on the transperancy yourself. next, mix up the photo emulsion and, in a dark room, spread it onto the screen. point a fan at the screen, and let the screen dry out as long as you have patience to wait - hopefully a number of hours, say 4 to 6 or so. now, place your transparency on your screen. next, using carefull, scienctificly determined calculations (read horrible painstaking trial and error) determine the position of your light. then, using the same scientific method, turn the light on and expose the screen for your carefully determined amount of time. it is worth mentioning at this point that for a person new to this craft, there is the verry real, if not definate, likelyhood that after waiting hours and coming so far, you will discover that the light was not placed right or the exposure time was wrong, and you will have to wash the screen out and start all over. if all goes according to plan, however, after exposing the screen you will rinse it with cold water, and be left with a negative image which will work like a stencil through which the ink will be screened - see picture 2 for how your screen may look at this point.

this is the really fun part of the project, and when all your hard work on preparing the screen pays off - now you are ready to print your design. this part is all about the art of aplication and developing a good feel for how to screen different materials - try it and figure it out. if you are screenprinting on to fabric, make sure you throw your goods in the drier for a little bit to cure them after they air dry for a day or so.

anyway, also keep in mind the fact that my main man ralph nader did an still is making the world safer. peace