Metal Casting Zone

I currently am working with the WACO Air Museum in Troy OH as a volunteer and supporter. The museum has a vintage aircraft reproduction that, when build, used an updated engine for flight and the aircraft was flown about 20 times. The engine was then removed and the aircraft was donated to the museum.

An original engine for this aircraft, even in bad shape, would cost ten's of thousands of dollars. For now, we have a reasonably close replica of the engine cast and cut out of Styrofoam.

The reason I came here is because of my bright idea. I was wondering if anyone here would want to turn their hand to casting an authentic looking replica of the engine. My naive casting experience figures there would be four castings to make a flat twin replica. Please bug me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information. Thanks!!

Your about 2 hours from me. I love old planes, trains and automobiles, also boats, machinery, printing presses...OK anything mechanical.

Sounds like a great project, I'm just concerned with the size. 10# of Aluminum is about all I can do right now. I'll drop you an e-mail.

I'm assuming that you want it to look original and not actually run.

welcome to the forum troy. sounds like a big project. yes jammer its got to go and if you do the casting you are to have first flight

how about some pictures and dimensions?? it would give us a better idea of what we would be getting into. If your going to cast an engine you might as well make it a running one... Let me guess its an inline flat 2 cyl with exposed valve train?

i would love to see some pics. i fear that a bigger pot is needed.

Thank you all so much. I have replied to all emails. I am going over to the museum tonight. I will see what they have in the way of pictures. My gut feeling is that they must have had something to make the styrofoam engine.

Now it was my belief they want the airplane to be a display and it won't ever fly again.

Again, I will show them the thread and get their feedback.

Thank you all!!!

BTW, for what it's worth, my family has a history with hot metal. My father worked at Portland Forge for over 40 years.