So, this past Sunday I had an extended melting session. Started up the foundry easily enough, but it wouldn’t heat up enough and when I’d hit it with the blower it would die. Not to mention that I initially forgot about the clogging issue. Needless to say, frustration level was high.

After some troubleshooting I decided not to use the blower – it was causing me more issues than helping. I got to the point where I figured out how to set the burner to really push out the heat without running rich. It’s all a combination of fuel pressure, air pressure, and controlling fuel flow with the needle valve. Wow. It was a great learning experience. Once I got everything figured out it was late in the afternoon, about 4pm, so daylight was getting to be an issue. By the time it was all said and done, the sun had gone down and I was putting stuff away with the light of the camp lantern.

What was the outcome? I melted down two boxes of drives and parts for a total of three ingots and two small stakes (what I call the smaller triangular ingots) and one Volvo cylinder head, which yielded three good size ingots with one stake and a tiny piece of a stake. I probably could have made three full size ingots (bread molds) which is what I’ll do next time.

Monday afternoon (17-FEB-2014) I received the 6-ft pieces of ACME threaded rods: one 5/8″x8 and 2 of 1/2″x10 and the 5″x1″ bore pulley for my boring bar. Nice! I was sweating how I would bore the tail stock and what size I would make the bore then it occurred to me – just make it match the head stock spindle like the Gingery model. So, I’ll make it 1.5″ bore. I started looking at steel bars on-line – pretty reasonable for CRS.