CA-ON Bentone 34 or other “organophilic” clay?

[Tobho Mott]

That's awesome to hear! Looking forward to hearing how the molds and castings turn out.

You've done your homework, obviously. For anyone else, or if you missed it, here's a bunch more info on K-bond sand, including Tom Cobett's suggestions (and recantations, regarding the use of glycerin). One post (#84) seems to confirm what you're saying about how the Natural Pigments' organoclay (used to be) the petrobond II equivalent as it does not need any activator/catalyst:

Mixing up K-Bond Sand (Similar to Petrobond)

ADDED LATER: See post 17 below concerning better formulation options. I followed as closely as I could the K-bond formula published online to make...

forums.thehomefoundry.org

And for a Canadian perspective, here's some background on my friends Doug's K-bond adventure using real bentone-34 from Elementis, if it helps. He's using his to cast model steam loco parts in bronze and cast iron(!).

My adventures with K-Bond

Like some of you, I like the properties of Petrobond, but find it pretty expensive. Enter K-bond, a do-it-yourself version. It promises to be cheaper...

forums.thehomefoundry.org

I have a sample of his K-bond here and it feels just like the real thing when I compare it to my OBB sand and US Petrobond, and from what I remember the 40# of K-bond I made a few years ago using a small sample of VG-Plus as the binder. I haven't used his yet, or made any new oil sand using the bentone-34 sample he gave me, but once all this new greensand is put away I'll get into it and report back.

Jeff

 

[Ogmios Forge]

Happy Victoria Day everyone!

The long weekend afforded me the time to run my DIY petrobond through its paces, with some liquid bronze. Happy to say, it worked well. The 50 mesh sand was only so-so, but the 130 mesh batches (one with SAE 30, the other with synthetic 2-cycle) worked quite well!

But I can say now, that the Pangel B10 organoclay seems to work effectively.

Patrick

 

[Johnwa]

@Ogmios Forge what are you using for a muller?
John

 

[Ogmios Forge]

@Ogmios Forge what are you using for a muller?
John

Hi John. I’m using a DIY muller, made out of a beer keg and some steel boules.

If you look for “Ogmios Forge” on YouTube, my two most recent posts are the build video for my muller, and testing the sands I made with the organoclay I mentioned above.

Patrick

 

[Tobho Mott]

That's great! Congrats.

Cool muller. I was.sure I was already subscribed to your YT, but I had to go search for your recent videos and discovered I somehow wasn't, or YouTube forgot I was or something, go figure. Fixed that, anyway.

I've talked to a couple people who've used tumbling ball (or heavy rock) type mullers like yours, but you're the first I know of who's tried to actually make new oil bonded sand in a muller of that sort. Of the rest, I think only a couple were making greensand with varying degrees of success, and the rest were all using premulled petrobond. It's great to see that it worked well!

Jeff

 

[Ogmios Forge]

That's great! Congrats.

Cool muller. I was.sure I was already subscribed to your YT, but I had to go search for your recent videos and discovered I somehow wasn't, or YouTube forgot I was or something, go figure. Fixed that, anyway.

I've talked to a couple people who've used tumbling ball (or heavy rock) type mullers like yours, but you're the first I know of who's tried to actually make new oil bonded sand in a muller of that sort. Of the rest, I think only a couple were making greensand with varying degrees of success, and the rest were all using premulled petrobond. It's great to see that it worked well!

Jeff

Thanks! So far, so good, at least. As I say in the video, there’s something about the process that I need to understand better. Just throwing the ingredients in the muller, one at a time, didn’t quite work. I had to add a little more of A, and then a little more of B, etc. Although it occurs to me that the Pangel B10 might just lend itself to a slightly different proportion of ingredients from the old K-Bond recipe, which used Bentone 34. Either way, it worked out in the end, so the rest is just refinement and optimization…

 

[Ogmios Forge]

For the record, I used Green Diamond blasting sand (130 mesh) from Foundry Supply Source, the Pangel B10 organoclay mentioned above, Propylene Carbonate from Alphachem as a catalyst, and two different oils. I used Motomaster SAE 30 non-detergent from Canadian Tire in one batch, and Laser Synthetic Smokeless 2-cycle oil from Home Hardware in the other.

The final proportions of the ingredients came out to about the same in each batch:

Sand: 20 pounds
Organoclay: 1.5 pounds
Oil: 1 pound
Catalyst: 0.15 pounds

So it might just be the way that Pangel B10 works, but I haven’t found anyone else using it this way, so I couldn’t compare notes. I will almost certainly continue to fiddle with the proportions though…