Dave
Gingery's Green-Sand Casting Techniques
Dave Gingery died a couple of years ago, but he's back to haunt us! Not only, haunt us, but terrorize us with his damned banjo! With his homebuilt lathe in the background, that off-the-wall Ozark hillbilly serenades us in this 2002 video clip with "The Cat Came Back" as he strums his banjo. I don't know if he's referring to himself as the cat that comes back to haunt us, or he just wants to strangle the cat that keeps making unwanted deposits in his foundry sand!
Vince then asks him to explain how his series of books came to be and why. But the video revolves about getting started in foundry, especially in using a simple charcoal furnace to melt aluminum. You'll see images of the ruins of the charcoal iron foundry in St James, MO as proof that charcoal is a more than adequate fuel. And Dave will tell you why the charcoal foundry is worth building.
Then
in brand new high quality video, Vince shows you the details of the charcoal
furnace, how it is fired up, fed aluminum, and after 20 minutes dross skimmed
and ingots are poured. You'll see why this cheap little furnace is such an
essential addition to metalworking.
Next you'll see Bob Bailey's somewhat primitive video (at least by today's standards) from years ago of Dave Gingery ramming up a mold of what must be an 8" flywheel. You'll see it all, ramming, seating in the bottom board, rolling, cutting sprues, and cleaning up the mold. The mold is poured with aluminum melted in Dave's crucible furnace, and, finally, the hot casting being shaken out. You'll get an idea of how wet to make the sand, and how hard to ram the mold. The video is low resolution, the two old birds are engaged in very stiff conversation that is almost laughable (if you knew these guys at all), but all in all is very educational.
Then
you get bonus video showing the indexing head, chucks, change gears and
other parts cast with the charcoal foundry. You'll see some of the patterns
for the two-cylinder Stirling engine,
as well as the engine running. You get short clips showing the lathe in
operation, the amazing shaper cutting surfaces on aluminum and steel,
the milling machine flattening an aluminum angle with a fly cutter, the
drill press drilling angle iron, and the brake bending up steel.
The video closes with great video of Dave firing his crucible furnace.
If
you haven't poured castings, you're missing out on one of the most powerful
ways of working metal. You can build a charcoal furnace quickly and inexpensively.
After all, that was the whole purpose of his incredible series of books. After
you're hooked on foundry work, you'll want to carefully consider building
a larger, more convenient furnace, and that's when you'll want to consider
the crucible furnace.
This is a fun DVD with old and new video worth having if you've never poured castings, and worth having if you, like so many of us, miss crazy Dave, or for too many people who have no idea of who he was. Informative, funny, a keepsake. I suppose it's also valuable to the handful of bums reading this catalog who prefer to sit on his butt and do nothing but watch. But if it inspires just one of those bums to get started, it will have served its purpose very well. Consider it carefully. DVD runs 42 hours 18 minutes (well.... maybe not that long... seems like 41 hours of banjo... I really didn't notice how long it lasted.)
I make fun of Dave Gingery and His Banjo,
but
the truth is I admire the fact that he took interest in music at almost 70 years
of age. He was a tin-horn musician, but he had fun learning and fun playing.
He got my respect. Ask people you know what they've learned in the last 10 years,
and you'll probably won't hear much. They're self-made duds. This guy got a
lot out of life because he put a lot into it. Yah gotta admire someone like that.
Something we all need to remember. | ||
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