Charcoal Foundry

by Dave Gingery

You can melt aluminum, pot metal, and even brass with a very simple home built furnace fueled with grocery store charcoal. In a very few minutes you can melt beer cans, your wife's pots and pans, the siding off your neighbor's house, the pistons out of your car, and anything else you can beg, borrow, or steal.It costs very little to build, and it works incredibly well.

All you need is an old metal, 5-gallon pail, about $6 worth of fireclay, some sand, a junk auto heater fan with a coffee can shroud (or a vacuum cleaner), and this book to build a high temperature furnace. One man built the furnace itself for about $7. The blower, cords, a pipe for a crucible, and the rest cost a few dollars more, but I can't imagine that the whole set up being more than $25 - probably much less if you're a good alley picker.

Some sandbox sand and fireclay will do very well for making sand castings. And all you need are some 1x4' and a few nails to build a cope and drag to make your molds. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to build a complete foundry.

After making a pattern (something that takes some skill), I rammed up a sand mold and fired up the furnace. In went the crucible around which I placed about 75¢ worth of charcoal briquettes.Into the crucible went beverage cans, an old electric iron, and a couple of pistons. After skimming off the dross, I poured the 1400 degree metal into the sand mold. About 20 minutes later, I had a face plate casting for a small lathe. Since then I've made lots more castings, and you can too.

A Foundry Will Give You Amazing Power Over Metal!

This is the first book in Gingery's series showing you how to build a complete metal working shop from scrap for almost nothing. You must have the foundry setup in order to build the lathe, milling machine and other tools described in each of the other books. Castings make strong and precise machine tool components. You'd go broke buying the castings, if they were available, but you can make them for almost nothing in your own foundry.

Building machine tools takes hours and hours, but building the charcoal foundry is far simpler, and loads of fun. You can make castings for any purpose. Almost anyone can build a furnace, and you will become "hooked" on melting metal once you try it.

The Charcoal Foundry is a small book worth every penny of its price and then some. Every page is loaded with practical how-to and useful advice. You get many, many drawings and excellent photographs that will show you step-by-step how to build a foundry. Highest recommendation! This is the book to get started with. Thousands already have! Top rate! Get a copy. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 softcover 80 pages

No. 163 ... $7.95