mini foundry

I've been meeting up with Chad and John the last couple Saturday mornings from 9:00-11:00 to work on a small foundry furnace build. We decided to do this meet-up as a way to divide up the parts of the foundry build. We started the idea a few weeks ago and each person was responsible for building one part and two copies so that collectively we could complete the project. Chad welded up the main metal can surround and tops (you could use a peach can for this if you wanted), I made the torch tube set screw collars and welded the nuts, and John provided the liner. In three weekends we were able to construct our mini furnaces. Today, I lit mine up and "burned in" the kaowool liner. We used refractory cement for the top and kaowool for the liner that was soaked in colloidal silica. I still need to get my dual propane burner set-up, but this should be great for melting small quantities of metal. I plan on building these with my casting class at App State this coming Fall. It should be a fun studio building project for the students. This was truly a great way to complete a project as a team. I only wish we had started these Saturday morning project meet-up years ago. Think of all of the finished projects I would have. It is a great way to work on studio projects regularly and it's great motivation knowing that others are depending on you to get your part completed. I am going to miss these two guys and they just "get it". We have one more project planned before I leave. It should be a good one! I'm convinced I'm going to have to do something similar with a group of people when I get to North Carolina.