New member - Ottawa area metal caster

[Tobho Mott]

Hello all,

Just found this forum, not sure how I missed it before! Looking forward to checking out what's already been posted, sharing info, and making a few new friends maybe.

Ottawa area hobbyist metal caster since 2013. I specialize in nonferrous sand casting, but plan to add cast iron soon. And lost wax casting eventually. All my gear (that I actually.have room to use) is shop built, with the exception of my crucibles. I've built furnaces that run on charcoal, wood, propane, and waste oil. Plus all the flasks and molding tools and tongs and shanks, even a sand muller.
For the first several years I was at the mercy of the weather, having to lay down molds outside when the weather allowed and roll my furnaces out and back inside the shed with each use. But a few years back I added better ventilation and fireproofing, allowing for all year metal casting under a roof and out of the weather.

Still definitely 95% hobbyist, but I do take on a few small runs and one off commissions here and there, mainly to pay for melting stock and new crucibles. And to help save up for a bigger casting shed, hopefully by the time I can retire from my day job... I acquired all of Bill Jurgenson's equipment when he closed up his art foundry in Niagara Falls and retired several years ago, and my 12x16 shed is just too small to be slinging around #200 of bronze at a time in!

Mainly those one off jobs tend to be reproducing antique parts that are missing from someone's restoration hobby project. Probably my favourite type of casting work.

However most recently I've been working with a local artist on a large sculpture project. And what a blast that's been!

I also equipped and taught a casting class at the blacksmithing school here in Ottawa for several months, which was the entire duration of that class being offered. Technically the school is in Hawkesbury now, but I was at the west Ottawa location that has since closed.

Also currently a mod at thehomefoundry dot org forums.

Again, very much looking forward to poking around the site and participating here!

Jeff

 

[Tomc938]

Welcome from Vancouver Island!

I've also done some aluminum casting, but would love to move up to iron at some point.

There's a great community here. Awesome bunch of supportive guys.

 

[140mower]

Hello all,

Just found this forum, not sure how I missed it before! Looking forward to checking out what's already been posted, sharing info, and making a few new friends maybe.

Ottawa area hobbyist metal caster since 2013. I specialize in nonferrous sand casting, but plan to add cast iron soon. And lost wax casting eventually. All my gear (that I actually.have room to use) is shop built, with the exception of my crucibles. I've built furnaces that run on charcoal, wood, propane, and waste oil. Plus all the flasks and molding tools and tongs and shanks, even a sand muller.
For the first several years I was at the mercy of the weather, having to lay down molds outside when the weather allowed and roll my furnaces out and back inside the shed with each use. But a few years back I added better ventilation and fireproofing, allowing for all year metal casting under a roof and out of the weather.

Still definitely 95% hobbyist, but I do take on a few small runs and one off commissions here and there, mainly to pay for melting stock and new crucibles. And to help save up for a bigger casting shed, hopefully by the time I can retire from my day job... I acquired all of Bill Jurgenson's equipment when he closed up his art foundry in Niagara Falls and retired several years ago, and my 12x16 shed is just too small to be slinging around #200 of bronze at a time in!

Mainly those one off jobs tend to be reproducing antique parts that are missing from someone's restoration hobby project. Probably my favourite type of casting work.

However most recently I've been working with a local artist on a large sculpture project. And what a blast that's been!

I also equipped and taught a casting class at the blacksmithing school here in Ottawa for several months, which was the entire duration of that class being offered. Technically the school is in Hawkesbury now, but I was at the west Ottawa location that has since closed.

Also currently a mod at thehomefoundry dot org forums.

Again, very much looking forward to poking around the site and participating here!

Jeff

Welcome from Lillooet BC. I don't do any casting, but a lot of what I do produce is probably best bound for a crucible .......

 

[jcdammeyer]

Welcome from Vancouver Island.

http://www.autoartisans.com/Furnace1jpg.htm

 

[whydontu]

Welcome from Vancouver!

 

[Tobho Mott]

Wow, all from BC. My parents moved back out there (Kelowna) about 5 minutes after I got my first apartment. Ok, technically it also coincided with Dad's retirement fairly closely. Anyhow, thanks for the words of welcome!

Jeff

 

[6.5 Fan]

Welcome from SK.

 

[Susquatch]

Welcome from south of Chatham Ontario.

 

[Engmaxx]

Welcome from Newmarket Ontario

 

[Bandit]

Welcome from south of Calgary, like to see some of your casting projects.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Welcome from east GTA. I think we'd all be interested in some pics of your foundry setup and equipment, as well as some casting projects you've done. I just have a small electric foundry right now, and do smaller sand cast stuff in my garage, but building a bigger propane/waste oil foundry is an upgrade coming in the future.

 

[slow-poke]

Welcome, neighbor!

Where are you in Ottawa?
I'm K1J 7G2

 

[Tobho Mott]

Hey, cool. I'm just past Ottawa city limits in North Dundas, between Metcalfe and Winchester. Most places in Ottawa are about a 40 minute drive from here.

I have lots of video but not a lot of recent stills of the furnaces, I had to grab these from my build threads on another site, so they're from the first firings back when they were new and innocent. So think of these, only more burnt up looking and rustier.

This is the waste oil furnace. Built in 2015 inside an 18" cut down steel drum. 2" of 2600f ceramic fiber blanket behind 1" of 3200F dense castable refractory. There's a foot pedal built into the cart to lever the heavy lid up just enough to swing it open and closed. It has room for an A25 crucible if I'm running waste oil or diesel, maybe a little bigger if I left the burner on propane preheat mode. Which I would not. But the biggest crucible I've used in it was an A12. It's great when I need to be doing multiple melts back to back but less efficient for one-and-done use due to its thermal mass - a couple hundred pounds of dense refractory takes a while to heat up, but it holds its heat for a long time. It uses a speed controlled 5 gallon bucket sized shop vac head for forced air. Burner is a drip injection type needle valve regulated waste oil burner that uses a preheated furnace to vaporize the drips of oil as they are blown into the furnace. Similar to the "Brute" or "Hot Shot" burners designed by Lionel Oliver which can still be seen on the old backyardmetalcasting website



This is the low mass propane furnace. Might have been 2017? Not 100% sure on that. I call it a propane furnace but I use the same burners for both. All it is is 2" of ceramic fiber insulation with maybe 1/8"-1/4" of 3200F refractory mortar painted onto it. It's light enough I can pick it up and carry it to the trunk of my van. Both furnaces have a couple of insulating firebricks under the refractory on the floor. This one was built inside an old rusted out well water pressure expansion tank that came with the house. It will melt an A6 crucible running on just propane starting from cold in only about 5 minutes more than the oil furnace takes ust to preheat enough that I can switch over to oil from propane, so I rarely bother even setting up the oil gravity feed tank and line. It's absolutely my go-to furnace when I'm just doing one melt. Which is most of the time. It'll take the A12 crucible too but there's not quite enough breathing room to use oil. I could run oil with the A6, but I never do. Although I'm working on a possible source of free waste jet-A from a neighbour... The A6 is big enough for most pours I do. A6 means approximately 6# of aluminum, that's brim-full (bad idea of you like your toes, ask me how I know). Or roughly 3 times that weight if using brass/bronze. This one just needs a hair dryer for forced air and about 5psi of propane.


There's more but I'll maybe put it in a separate post before I mess up this one. Now let's see if the pics went through right...

Jeff

 

[DavidR8]

Welcome aboard from Victoria!

 

[Tobho Mott]

On the left you can see the muller in the corner, next to the molding bench which ought to be full of sand not boxes of stuff.


It used to be a cement mixer, but I cut down the drum to make room for the wheel and plows suspended from a crossbar I bolted to the mixer's yoke.




The wheel rolls on a wear plate I tack welded in place. Petrobond sand got the track where the wheel rolls so well sanded and oiled that at a certain point, literally any amount of sand would rather just slide on the slick wear plate than get rolled over! I had to anglegrinder some tooth back onto that circular track, and problem solved.


When the sand is mulled to my liking, It just dumps out onto a garbage can, same way you'd pour out cement. I use the cut off piece of the mixer drum as a sort of wide funnel on top of the garbage can to catch any sand that flies sideways.

Oh, and I did find a pic of the old Gingery charcoal furnace!


Jeff

 

[Tobho Mott]

Pics of some stuff I brought to show off when I did a casting demo for the National Capital Network of Sculptors a couple months ago with a friend and former.student who's in tight with the network's current president.

Some examples of wooden and cast aluminum patterns, and some finished castings made from them...


Cast aluminum matchplate patterns with masters and castings, sand rammer patterns and completed "pound sand" rammer, belt buckles and a brass marking gauge with pattern...


Original vintage brass foundryman buckle on the left. Middle is an aluminum copy I cast from the original and modified to make a pattern. Right is a bronze one I made for me to wear.
The small bronze castings on top are 1918 Alan Herschel carousel horse stirrup strap holders. Leaning up against the world's least used permanent matchplate pattern for casting wooden horse stirrup strap holders.


I made another aluminum buckle pattern off the original that I then milled the foundryman detail off of to get a customizable buckle blank pattern. I was working at the blacksmithing school at the time and we were supposed to be able to sell some swag at the school's Comicon booth (which sadly happened a few weeks after they laid me off). Our leather teacher assured us we could get away with selling up to 5 of an item with unlicensed corporate branding on it (not a lawyer don't quote me on that), so I came up with this. Oh well, it went to my neighbour in the end, he is a great neighbour and puts punisher skull on all his cars and bikes, so he loves this thing.


Lost foam bunny rabbit castings. Just messing around really, but I do kind of like the bronze coat hook bunny head with the tusks and horns.


More lost foam casting experiments. The pear shaped man is actually a lost Cheetos casting.


Jack-o-lamp. Definitely not CSA approved. Pattern was glued up from the cut out face sections of 3 styrofoam jack o lanterns purchased at Michels on November 1.


I really don't mess with the lost foam casting on more than a for fun level, I'm really a sand caster. But it's absolutely possible to make very high quality castings (machine parts etc) using that method, as well as this kinda goofy stuff.

Cast aluminum very small production run matchplates for pattern rappers, sprue covers, and the wooden horse parts I still don't know why I put that much work into. The shoe is just a 3d printed pattern from a 2-off job that came through a couple years ago. Dude was building a custom fancy wooden display shoebox for his client and needed shiny metal shoe silhouettes to inset into the top and bottom of the lid. I never got to see a pic of the finished box.


I have recent pics from the sculpture project too, will come back with some of those in a while but I gotta pop away for a bit now.

Later,

Jeff

 

[jcdammeyer]

Methinks I'm going to learn a lot about casting from you. All I do are simple things. Keep posting.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Nice work. I thought I recognized the user name. Couldn't place it until you said you have lots of video...... I've stumbled on your youtube channel a few times. Didn't realized I hadn't subscribed, but I just rectified that......

 

[jcdammeyer]

Nice work. I thought I recognized the user name. Couldn't place it until you said you have lots of video...... I've stumbled on your youtube channel a few times. Didn't realized I hadn't subscribed, but I just rectified that......

Tobho Mott

Arcane Castings foundry began in 2013 as my backyard hobby. These days I still do some hobby projects and experiments, but I also make and sell custom metal castings, specializing in one-off jobs and small runs. Anything from out of production parts for antique machines to sculptural casting...

www.youtube.com

 

[DeBangis]

Welcome to CHMW&M Forums.

Technically, you're a resource person, OP. Nice and kudos.