Flasks and Molding Benchs

Tooling-Up for Cavity Molding...

A Rolling Molding Bench & Flasks

This is a typical January day up here in Eastern Ontario...

... gray, cold and dreary.

I've just picked-up 220lbs of fine grain olivine chemically bonded sand. I really want to try it out, but have some grunt work ahead of me first.

If you haven't read my numerous whinings about wood working, here comes another...

I have no choice but to cover the pattern shop with yet another layer of sawdust.

I found this scrap of plywood out in the barn, and started to measure and calculate...

The idea as always is to avoid a trip into town, and have to interact with people.

After some figuring, I settled on 4 (four) flask sets (Cope & Drag), 2 (two) measuring 8 X 12" and two measuring 12 X 16" respectively.

Measure, cut, measure, cut and on and on...

As I've convinced myself that the quality of work that I'll be able to produce with this new set-up will be in direct proportion to the quality of the flasks.

I've opted to sand down the plywood, and remove any rough surfaces and edges.

All of the boxes are lined with a 3/4" square pine runner.

The idea is that it will provide added support for the sand that will be rammed into the flasks.

The 8 X 12's likely didn't need it, but the 12 X 16's would.

The 12 X 16's are also re-enforced with metal strapping on all inside corners, as well as being stapled together.

These are the alignment pegs that will keep the cope & drag halves registered after the pattern is withdrawn from the sand.

The pegs are all cut with a 10 degree taper off vertical on either side.

The smaller pegs on either side of the center peg are for the drag and are cut shorter to allow the drag to be rolled over.

The cope pegs are the longer center pieces.

Above are flasks assembled with well over a thousand staples... Air tools make wood working enjoyable. Actually having reasonable tools makes anything enjoyable.

The image to the right (above) are the flasks with a heavy layer of "Diamond Coat" poly urethane, inside and out.

Even if I was completely blind, I'm sure I could tell the difference between an 8X12 and as 12X16 flask set.

But how the boxes line up as a set became a real problem so I applied a quick coat on the paired flasks for quick identification.

Only one set of pegs per pair is painted, and the pegs between the pairs of each size have the pegs off-set so that only a matched pair will mate properly. The paint is for identifying the orientation of the matched set.

Rolling Molding Bench

Again, more recycled material from earlier renovations...

This is the base of the bench that will hold the olivine sand. I'm exercising tremendous restraint by focusing my energies on this project when all I want to do is melt metal and become familiar with this new casting technique.

But the sand was a considerable expense, plus required asking my sister to haul it from Toronto to my parent's home where I went to pick it up... If not for her efforts I'm sure the cost of shipping it the 400Km would have equaled the cost of sand.

I knew I had 4 (four) solid rubber casters somewhere in theworkshop.ca, and once I had the idea to use them I could not drop the idea.

I lost a day and a half looking for them. In the course of the search I found boxes of stuff that I'd squirreled away in the foundry building earlier this past summer (2004) to make way for the pattern shop renovations.

Regardless, whether the casters are worthy of being on this page or not, they are here now.

The bench is starting to take shape now and is being held together with a mix of 3 1/2" spiral ardox, 3" air nails and the sheeting again with over a thousand 1" brad staples.

When I say over a thousand staples, I shit you not... I started these two projects with a box of 5,000 thousand that was over half full and it's empty now.

So after 2 weeks of bumbling about the shop, the worst of it is behind me.

Bench, flasks, molding boards all ready for action.

As I've stated elsewhere on some previous page, I actually get a better view of what I've done by looking at these images, then when I'm working on the project at hand.

Beyond my eternal frustration of not being able to do everything all at the same time, and spending upwards of an hour looking for a hammer that may well be only a few feet away from where I think it is, I'm satisfied with my progress to date.

All of these new items are in support, of my commitment to improve the quality and techniques of the work coming out of theworkshop.ca. And to that end, I'll be starting the first of series of courses offered by Mohawk College in their Industrial Technologies program on Jan 28th, by the end of 2005 I will have my CFA (Canadian Foundry Assoc.) certificate in Metal casting and mold making techniques.

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