New Casting Furnace Melting Aluminium Scrap Into Ingots

I made a new casting furnace to go with my new forge. In this video the new furnace is used to melt aluminium scrap into ingots and muffins. These will be used in upcoming videos to cast various items. Casting the scrap into bars allows it to be cleaned up so that items made from these bars will be of good quality.

The furnace is made from a 5 gallon steel pail lined with firebrick and refractory cement. The burner is a forced air type. The blower came from an old microwave oven and its speed is controlled by a variac. The crucible is a piece of steel pipe with a bottom made from steel plate welded on.

[tobhomott]

Nice ingots. If you bury the pipe molds in a bucket of sand almost up to the top, the aluminum won't be able to leak out. Just a thought...

[gth]

Lol, nice plug for safety gear :). My yard has ant hills that'd take every drop of that crucible. Feel free to take a road trip to make some castings :D.
Welcome back, and thank you for sharing this. Oh, and continued thanks for saving my garage with your videos!

[trustthewater]

I really like your design. Looks like it runs very well. I've been wanting to make a furnace... for about 25 years. Maybe I'll actually do it someday.
Can you have too much air flow? I know way too much would probably cool things but I was wondering if just having excessive flow causes problems like the aluminum oxidizing or something.

[TheCraigy]

2:55 i have +10 of them red handled ballvalves 😆

[TheCraigy]

Bill you have a healthy appreciation for destruction and mirror all my intrests !

do you have more fun making your cannons then shooting them ? i make a new ballvalve rifle every week neally, often from deodorant cans with nothing to grab onto or threads to work with and that tests my problem solving to the max...ive realised i bearly shoot them partly because their LOUD at only 11ftlb ! but making them is the best part .

will you drill out a cavity in two planks of wood and tap it with a presta and see how much pressure it will hold?
i cant make make more then 150psi with what i have and currently testing to see if my rifle stock can also be the air tank 😆..im waiting on some glue drying on a test with a cavity the size of a shot glass..ive uesd glue&screws, if it leaks ive got a thick rubber gastkit to test and silicon bath sealer stuff...it should hold plenty of psi..or splinter my face 😆...👍🏻