TL;DR: It works, try it.
I finished off the furnace with another couple of pounds of refractory cement, and let it dry for a couple of days, then fired it slowly over a few hours to burn out the rest of the water. Things looked solid, so the next step was to try and cast something. Of course, my first thought was to “forge” some currency, and the results are below:
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Yet another busy afternoon; I mixed up some perlite/refractory and started building out a furnace for aluminum casting. Things are going pretty well so far. The 4:1 perlite to refractory mix seems to work OK, although I am sticking closer to 3:1 right now. My refractory cement already has some aggregate in it, so it’s a bit intolerant of the big chunks of perlite. I wish I could add some soap to the mix to make the perlite wet out better.
I’ve been hanging around in the Fur section of Dressew a lot lately. Dressew is the best fabric store in Vancouver. It’s huge! They also have the largest selection of fur fabric anywhere in the lower mainland, which attracts a certain…clientelle. Before you ask, I wasn’t buying any to wear! I’ve started on a few new projects which require vast quanities. The first is Oleg the Yeti: He’ll stand about 30" tall.
Vancouver Maker Faire is this weekend! It’s the very first one in Vancouver so make history and be there! Get your tickets here: http://www.makerfaire.ca/ Derek and I are putting the final touches on our projects. We actually finished everything! Amazing! Here’s a pic of the brass octopusses/pi on the bench arms. We added these this week. We’ve put a grainy video up of the project set up in our living room.
…has pretty much been the sound track to our lives for the past 4 months. Check out our Flight of the Bumble Bee video here: http://youtu.be/DwVyVqM3BAg?hd=1 This video will be playing in “ContainR” at Maker Faire. It’s next weekend folks, step right up and get your tickets! It’s only a 2 day event and there are a limited number of tickets.
