Been keeping my eye out for a metal 5 gallon bucket to make a small foundry in. I have gone to garage sales, asked the guys at work, even spent last night at Farm and Fleet looking for anything that resembled a 5 gal metal bucket. We are in the plastic age... apparently people think plastic buckets are butter than metal ones. The metal buckets I did see were full of solvents or roofing tar... and cost $50 - $100. I suppose if I need the materials in the can, they would have worked out great... but alas...
This morning, I hit the garage sales bright an early after Mass thinking I might see a hidden bucket used to prop up a table... rich neighborhoods are not great places to look for junk. A rich (wo)man's idea of junk is a $65 designer jacket that isn't in style anymore. Did find a nice little tent for Doddy. Went to some sales outside of richey-rich land, and found some safety goggles, and an old worn file that I can use for scraping. Anyway, I decided I would drive to the scrap yard and check that out and look for a bucket while I was there.
I needed to have introduced myself to scrap yards many years ago. I was like a giddy school boy skipping along through the acres of old cars, scrap piles, and [insert anything metal here]. I found lots of metal buckets... except they had all been squashed... very disappointing... like seeing someone use a rare coin to play a video game. Noticed the scap shop had one of the solvent cans like F&F did last night... Thought about asking them for it, but I was going to look around first. Walked around... made mental notes of things that I might want later, and a couple acres later, I found a old car that caught my eye. Look inside, and siting in the front seat was a metal bucket. It was a bit rusty, and a hole in the bottom, but it was better than nothing.
Decided to still keep my eye out on the way back... two more yellow bucket caught my eye... old metal paint buckets, with no visible rust... except they were half filled with dried paint, and I wasn't about to try to clean those out. Must have come across a half dozen full and half full yellow and red paint cans... perfect on the outside... full of paint on the inside. Did find another rusty bucket, it was not better than the first one, so I picked it up anyway.
Just getting ready to leave when I noticed some more squashed paint cans. Thought there might be some whole one around, and came across some of those heavy walled empty solvent cans. !!! :-) They were in pretty good shape, so I grabbed the one with the least amount of dents. These cans have a closed top to them, but I figure I would come up with something to remove it. They guys at the scrap yard didn't even make me pay for it... another item for free.
So costs.. besides the time spent searching outside the scrap yard, I spent about 1.5 hours. gas cost was nothing since it was in town. I used a cold chisel to cut the top of the can which took me about 10 minutes. The safety glasses, and my file / scraping tool cost $1. All and all a pretty good day. Now to get some fire clay!
[back]Wow, it’s already our three year anniversary. In one sense, it seems like it should be longer... a lot has happened in 3 years. Graduation, Job, 2 kids, new house... etc. In the other sense, time has gone by so fast... seems like just yesterday we were walking to the IMPE pool on a Saturday when Megan was off work, and letting pizza dough rise while we were gone... then coming home to sit in our makeshift couch (2 chairs facing each other) while we watched TV on our computer... and then eating the perfect pizza that barely fit in our oven!
I love you and the Kids Megan... I hope the rest of the time we have together is as blessed as it has been!
[back]So my new hobby involves making my own metal lathe. Yes, I realize that I can buy one at the store, but I don’t want to. With something like this, it’s more fun to spend time than money. Plus I want the satisfaction of at least knowing how to make my own.
So I need foundry sand in order to make greensand molds for the molten metal… spent a week or two calling around locally, even purchased a bag of stuff at the hardware store. None of it was fine enough to do castings in. Yesterday, made a phone call to US Silica... they actually are the only ones in the Midwest that seem to readily have an F110 gradation on hand. They are in Ottawa Illinois... bout 1.5 hours away from here. Nice lady tells me they have it, but it’s only for their regular customers, because it’s in such low production. Then she says hold on.... and comes back to tell me that a pallet had fallen off a truck last week, and that there were 3 odd 100lb bags that I could come pick up if I wanted. I ask how much... lady says free... yup FREE!!! (Not that sand cost much anyway, but free is always good!) So this morning, I headed out after Mass, went an got my three bags of extra fine sand, and made it back home in time for lunch! 3 100lb bags of sand are hard to move out of my little Toyota.
I spent about 3 hours of driving, and about a half tank of gas. Out of that cost, I got 300lbs of great sand for free, nice driving adventure, and a great story to tell. I would say it was worth the cost. Now to get supplies to build my foundry!
[back]