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<---------------- nick
Have a look at these video stills of an iron pour at The Ohio State University's Department of Art. I use these images when I do slide lectures on iron casting, and now you can enjoy them without the college tuition.
Before I graduated with my MFA from OSU, a few of my students and I thought
it would be fun to build a cupola furnace from scratch. We used a modified
version of the design from the book: "Iron Melting Cupola Furnaces for
the Small Foundry" - By Steve Chastain 2000. ISBN 0-9702203-0-8. It is
a pretty good furnace, but I found it to be a little fickle for inexperienced
foundrypersons like us, largely due to its small diameter. We had some difficulties
with our first pour, and clogged the furnace before all of our molds were
filled. I am still proud of our work, and I am happy to say that the one and
only time there was molten iron at OSU, I was to blame. The melt went pretty
well, but we didn't get very far before our mistakes caught up with us. We
managed to freeze a rather large hunk of iron near the taphole resulting in
many subsequent hours behind a carbon arc torch. I recommend that casting
amateurs have an oxygen lance on hand for just this kind of occasion, so that
any frozen iron can be burned away while the furnace is still hot. Most of
us got nothing for all of our labor. Kristin got a beautiful 35 lbs. of gray
iron in the form of a hammer and sickle. I got heat stroke after working to
free up the furnace before we gave up and shut it down.
I later took the same furnace to the Columbus College of Art and Design while
I was an instructor in sculpture there and poured iron again with a new crew
of young sculptors. We had much success and poured a few pieces using plaster
investment molds. We also used a direct Styrofoam replacement technique, as
we did at OSU using a Styrofoam positive held in vibrated dry sand, and had
good results.
-n
OSU Iron Team:
Nick De Pirro, Ben Jones, Satomi Jin, Kristin Desiderio, Matt Burke.
Camera:
Ian Williams
back <------------------
home <------------------
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still pretty cold |
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charging |
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charge lighting up |
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blasting |
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looking for liquid iron |
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quickly clearing the taphole |
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open taphole |
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molten iron on the move |
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first cool molten iron |
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keeping the taphole clear |
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blasting to pour |
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torch tap |
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almost there |
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stubborn |
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Caution: flying iron. |
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tapped |
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iron folowing |
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pouring like water |
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"Where is the bod rod?" |
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"Forget it, I'll use my foot!" |
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pouring some slag off |
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barking orders |
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on center... |
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pour! pour! |