Well... I had an eventful day. I went to cast the lathe bed, and I obviously had the sand too wet. I started pouring and it started boiling out of the spru hole. I finished the pour and dumped the rest of the metal. Then I have a couple of SCUBA tanks someone gave me. I was gonna try and melt those down. I figured out by doing other stuff this way that I could put it over the vent hole and it will melt and drip into the crucible down below... Well, I also found out that they are not made of AL like I thought they were. I sat it on top and it just sat there. I turned up the heat and it just sat their. I, being the cautious lad that I am, stood on the other side of my truck for a while and watched in disbelief as it started to make a fluttering sound. I finally got brave enough to go and remove it and it was unaltered. I began to pig some scrap that I had so it would not be a completely wasted day and had a peice of brass. To my surprise, it melted. Wow! I got hot enough to melt brass. I filled the crucible with Al, all the while the fluttering sound continued, and lifted the lid and saw what all of the fluttering was about. My flower pot furnace had melted the flower pot lining. Devastation is upon me. It may be a while before I can get up and running now as I am on a shoestring budget unless I can find a way to patch this one up. Then again, I may wait til I save up enough to build one that will melt iron. Here are the pics of the day.
yes your sand was too wet. it might have felt right but ramming does tend to squeeze the moisture about. is it possible to just fit another flower pot to make do with???
