Former worker in a steel mill here. You should cast it standing, but try to fill the mold from the bottom up. Make a channel from top to bottom beside the cannon core and conect it to the bottom of the cannon. Use the upper end of the cannon as venting hole, and cover the open risers with a thick layer of sand to preserve heat in the metal after the pour. And you could make a thin slurry from Ehanol Alcohol and Bentonite powder to give the inner surface of the Mold a smoother surface. Just a little layer inside the mold. aply with an brush. Try it on a small mold, it will help with the surface texture. IF you cast in the the same position like in this video, place your entry way on the thickest part of the cannon (The sunken in part) and make a bigger reservour on top with thick walls of sand for insulation so you have 4 Pound extra material there. After the metal is in, cover the Tank with Sand. The metal will shrink inside, and pull metal from the top inside. Sorry fo my poor english, i am from germany and didn´t talk or write much in english. i could bring up some drawings if needed, just give the word.
Ordog213 Wow your knowledge is great!!! I hope to do some casting in the future. Would you share your e-mail address for questions? My e-mail is pharmacyman@att.net. Give me a shout!!!
With the bentonite part of this, you can get better surface finish with minimal inclusions. Fumed silica will probably work as well. The alcohol prevents the gas expansion issues you would have with a water slurry. 99% isopropanol is available for cheap enough. Another good thing would be to use aluminum to de-gas the brass and increase its strength to something closer to steel.
I thought of filling from the bottom immediately, but that channel will require quite a bit of extra metal, won't it? He can barely melt enough for start with.
Thoroughly enjoying myself, watching you, in this process. For millenia this was/is how it's done. Cannons, Halibrand wheels, Cyclone Racing Equipment quickchange, and Edelbrock intake manifolds. Life is great !
*Try a trapazoid walled mold, where the smallest side is down, therefore making less room for the sand to move, and then use pipe holding clamps (sorry I can not thing of the name of those, Sir) to add a extra mechanism to hold every thing in. I do not have any experience in casting but as someone who is very interested in engineering that is what I think you should try. Also you could try to keep the cast from cooling as fast, but I think the mold shape I described is better. If I'm right, Please fire the first shot in a huge lump of wet clay. Hope this works out, can`t wait to see it when it is done, but please reply soon.
You may be correct with the shrinkage .Also, it has been years since my high school foundry class but it seems like an air pocket because the vent was in the middle of the end and not at the high spot. Some gases will escape through the green sand but there is a lot of air to get out of that mold.
My experience is with the lost wax process. Worked at a foundry making the case for turbine engines. Some were 9 feet across. Most were cast with 718 steel.
in future I recommend heating the big chunk first then adding the small bits to reduce oxidization and slag/dross. Can you set the horizontal mould on a 20 degree incline to get your desired pour without going fully vertical? You could also make a plaster cast of your wood form wrap it in wire then bed it in sand. and then pour into that similar to a soapstone sword cast,
Use a side feeder to fill from the bottom up to limit sand breakouts. Having a mass at the top is a good idea too. So your mold wuld be more of a u shape than a single cylynder.
so close! Would holding the mold at a 45 degree angle during the pour help? That way the inlet would absorb the impact of the pour and the rest would funnel down into the actual mold. The only tricky part would be setting it upright to cool after pouring I suppose with weight, temperature, and the integrity of the mold housing to overcome. I love this series, thank you for the vid!
Having found you today and watched the progression of these videos along with the gunmental ones the thing that sticks out most is your determination. Think of those ads RUclips plays from people saying "Wanna know how I got so rich? By failing over and over"... Yada yada, Thomas Edison, yada yada... I think you get what I'm saying. You're going to succeed because you keep trying, and instead of exerting the most energy on being upset you focus it in on learning what you did wrong. This type of thinking is a dying art, but boy do I really enjoy watching it! Keep it up!
Plaster cap on the bottom to help absorb and spread the impact across the surface area of the sand. Not a metal worker, but it might have helped some, and you aren't mixing too much plaster in with the sand.
Interesting video, I have no experience casting anything other than small lead figures. But I do have a recommendation. Get a copy of Eighteenth Century Gunfounding by Melvin H Jackson and Charel de Beer (Smithsonian Institution Press Washington DC 1974) As the title indicates it is about how mussel loading cannon barrels were cast at the Royal Brass Foundry under the direction of Jan Verbruggen in the 1770s. At the core of the book are 50 illustrations dating to around 1776 that show how cannon barrels were cast and finished at the Royal Brass Works for service in the British Army, to which the authors have provided lengthy caption explaining what has been illustrated. This and the rest of the text provides a layman with a clear explanation of how cannon barrels were made in the 18th century, including mold making, casting and finishing as well as the various problems and difficulties that occurred during the process and how they were overcome.
After watching the video a few times i found out what bugged me for a bit. You should build a little Helper for holding up your crucible while pouring, a stable place to rest the shaft of your handling tool that provides you with an pived point for rotation and that takes the most of the weight of the material while casting. It would give you more controll over your process because it would allow you to maintain your concentration on the casting process and not on the Crucible itself. If you have to think about how to hold your tools while casting, it takes away from other tasks at hand Something like an stable Saw Horse out of metal with two pecks on top to hold the Handle shaft should work. And it helps tho eaase possible back pain ;)
the flat area is air pocket, you didnt make a vent at the highest part of the mould, also all the dross floats to the top so if you were using the canon to fire after presumably boring out the centre, there is a line of weakness running the length of the cannon which would cause it to explode. Pouring with the brech upwards is the right way to cast a cannon, however the dross still forms at the top end, so you need to cut away a good ammount of the length of the cannon to make sure you remove the pourous metal. Otherwise the end of the cannon is likely to fragment. so make you cannon longer than you need and cut back. Hope this helps. there are some articles on this regarding the first British made cannons and how they discovered some of these techniques from the Chinese i believe
your not that far out from a complete cast ... keep going you will get it. small vent holes about as thick as a pencil will allow air to escape and will fill with Bronze ... thia can be cut away after.
Okay. Well with the vent more material could be poured in and thus compensate for shrinkage. However if you go vertical pour then maybe a tilt as you pour to not destroy the sand from that long drop. @FarmCraft101
Also if you try horizontal with an additional vent and you are worried about a small weak spot. That is where you could drill and tap your powder cord drop to ignite the charge. Hope you get what I mean. Peace bro. Love your videos. @FarmCraft101
As far as pouring the molten metal, how about having an assistant or rigging a cradle where you can tilt the cast to about 5 degrees slightly to allow the metal to rather drain down the side at first and once the bottom is covered, tilt the cast vertically and fill again. like pouring a beer without a head. just an off the cuff idea. :)
use the wooden cannon to make a large silicone mold. this would cost quite a bit in silicone but you could use that mold to make a wax cannon and do lost wax casting, letting you melt out the wax before you even pour
Vertical pour, but put a cast iron mug or something similar in the bottom. maybe 6" of 3" steel pipe... as a gravity-cavity of sorts. Stops the bottom erosion. Makes a sort of dampner for the falling molten metal. And if you also preheat it, it helps preserve the temps for even pour. In fact, I'd want to preheat the whole damn mold as much as possible.
Try ask King of Random, they have experience casting copper (but not so big casts). They had a ton of failed attempts, until got descent result, so maybe could share few hints and tricks.
I think the mold and the sand casting is going to give a better end product that trying to use foam method as well. That's the way the old timers did it as well as by hand carving out the shape in the form it was intended to end up as shown in their detail to ornamentation of the end products as well in the original casting methods of that era.
with lost foam casting, you make a hollow mold of your cast mold, and you use expanding foam to make the actual foam mold, so its a single piece. This is how GM did it with Saturn's engine blocks.
A tapered sprue with some sort or choke to reduce the 2ft fall velocity, then gate in to the bottom and fill it up from the bottom up. Then you have the best of both worlds. I like the way you do things!
I cannot imagine zinc being of benefit to your alloy. I do not remember the name of the company, but there is at least one foundry in the New England area that has been casting bells since a bit before the American Revolution. You may want to ask them about an appropriate alloy to get the strength you want. (it's possible they may have an alloy for cannon in their archives.) Skipper2384, and Ordog213, Are correct on sprue and gating. This means you'll need a larger crucible yet, or run two furnaces with both crucibles, or go with a smaller "saluting cannon" I think. In your first video, you mentioned the possibility of using a 4140 sleeve. Check to make sure the two metals do not react badly to each other, would be the last of my advise. Dissimilar metals have been the bane of several adventures in history.
hi As a young man we made cannons in the gun shop,always brass shafting. Now as an old man 72 I make them in my shop still shafting and still no failures. lesson# 1 projectile wt. = chamber pressure switch to golf balls, flea market , cheap ammo and you can watch it go J.B.
Use the sand with Sodium Silicate addition (3% to 4% by weight is standard) and set it with CO2. This will make a much tougher, stronger mould. I started my career in a foundry making very large lathe beds (up to 15 / 20 feet long) amongst other things. All of the moulds and cores etc were made by this method. Easy for the hobbyist, no complicated methods. An assistant to lift, assist with pouring would be a very good idea. You need to be pouring very much faster, get the molten metal into the mould as fast as possible to ensure no partial solidification and thus poor surfaces etc.
Could you put a sacraficial ridge along the topside of the cast to catch bubbles and insure a full pour? Sorry for the extreme noob question. Never melted anything hotter than wax, unless you count that time I managed to fuse sand to the bottom of a cast iron pan I wasn't supposed to be using for such things. & that was decades ago. Oh! I burnt my hand with solder around the same time! Oh the adventures of youth...
that isn't shrink, it is a gas/air pocket. You can tell because it is in the area of the cope(up-right half of the flask) where the shape of the model goes higher than the gates from your pour hole or sprue. You had no risers holes in the cope so the air/gas got trapped and the metal wasnt able to fill out completely. Shrink is generally uniform regardless of which orientation you cast. You could succeed doing it this way again. You would have to add risers to the cope, this would allow the gases to escape from the highest point within the fill cavity.
That does not look like shrinkage. It looks like trapped air. Vent with a welding rod sized holes perhaps? Full vertical fall seems like it will errode your sand mold resulting in inclusions. Inclined perhaps? Interesting project at any rate. Thanks for posting.
Engineer here. I did Alu casting at school. Would not be allowed today for H&S reasons. However I digress. Would they have rotated the whole assembly as it cools to strengthen the casting and the way the metal cools/sets? Well done btw. Excellent production. What was that first sketch of? I didn't get that. (Teehee)
I am no expert on this but I think you need to ramp it up and have a person or two helping with the heavy weight pour. As you say do vertically have plenty of metal as hot as you can get it. have plenty of air vent holes at 45 degree angles up the 'spout' and do one big hot quick pour with plenty of support on the cope and the drag so it won't fall over. Also doing it that way means that if you come up short on metal you just have a shorter cannon. Trying to cast it with a hollow bore risks it being cooked. If you drill it later you know it will be true. When you have got the cannon sorted, how about doing a 2 gauge punt gun?
set the mould under a incline with the top up so that the lowest part of the neck comes above the highest part of the back of the cannon that way you should have good mould fill and not have to deal with the falling metal damaging your sand and should be able to not have a back riser saving you metal also use the bentonite trick from ordog213 works well
I have no experience casting metal but based on pouring water into a soft bottom without digging a hole I think maybe A preheated steel pipe with a cup on the end to slow and redirect the flow that you pull out before topping off the pour.
Why did you pour it from the front of the cannon? Since the back is higher, wouldn't that be a better option to make sure it fills up as it may not have been able to flow from the low from to the high back? Great video, thank you!
When ya go vertical, just tilt the whole mold at a 45 degree angle, then the metal won't slam into the bottom. It seems easier than making a cope that goes to the bottom and fills it up.
wouldnt forged steel be stronger for a bigger boom cast is usually weaker if im not mistaken and you seem to have all the equipment to cut up a big block and make a forged 2 ft. cannon
I think [pure amateur opinion here] that you should make a larger cope and drag, use the oak pattern in it but allow room for a long sprue beside it so that you can achieve a vertical pour. You will get the accurate casting with no embedded sand, you won't wash out the sides of the sand mould and you will get the concentric cooling from the outside to the inside. Sounds like a win win win to me.
Can the breach be made wider, so that when it collapses somewhat & you turn the breach down to proper size, all dimensions will be met. Love all the other videos, sorry you failed, but one learns from each failure. We use to call that experimenting, until you hit it. Lots of lock. I am now a subscriber due to your persistence. Big "P".
One final thing: You should think about reinforceing the sand inside the Frame. Just lay in some chicken wire fence after the first layer of sand, and place the make the entry gate and the air vents directly on your modell. Just add dowels in matching holes you drilles before hand. Fill the top part with sand, remove the dowels and then the positive like before. and when you start you casting pocess, DO NOT POUR DIRECT INTO THE ENTRY WAY, because the falling metal can destroy the mold inside. I will draw something up and add you to facebook so i can send it to you if you like.
Make your box wider and thicker so you cool the casting slower. Pour on the diagonal. Also try to add a pocket at the back of the breach to hold extra material About.the size of a baseball You know that the initial material is heating up the mold and it's probably solidifying.
Woulden't it be better if you do a gypsum mold pour? Make a 2 Piece gypsum mold for your cannon and reinforce it with a wooden casing and than do a vertical pour. The only thing you have to consider is to let the gypsum cure and dry completely and before you make the mold you have to lightly oil your pattern to prevent it from sticking to your mold.
You cannot cast it on its side unless you going to sleeve it. you can save money by putting the bronze you want to melt onto but not closing the exhaust. it also removes water and stops it splattering. can even explode from steam. Your fill spout is way to small as it must draw from there as the metal shrinks. On the top of your in-gate you will see if your degassing was good as the metal should hollow out and not rise. my first attempt was horizontal and it looked good but the trunnions were hollow which we only found on firing .
There are a lot of professionals giving advice here, but let me give a redneck’s two cents. Cover the bottom end of the halves of your form with plaster. You’ll get the benefits of the kind of vertical casting you talked about, but have a much stronger surface for your falling metal to contact with. If you thing the metal will stay molten long enough to fill the mold from the bottom, do it that way. Without a pre heated mold though, I’d be concerned about it freezing up before it’s full, it looked like you were getting a bit cold even on this horizontal pour.
I didn't know Grizzly sold cannon casting form boxes! I guess they really do sell everything!! Just Kidding... My Cannon shrinks when it gets cold as well... not kidding.
It is not wrong to combine methods. You could make foam sprues , and assemble the same mold as this try. A tapered sprue made of foam could lay alongside the cannon. Planks clamped top and bottom would allow you to rotate the mold to vertical position. A removable panel would then expose fill and riser openings. A strainer can help reduce sand and slag and also help moderate speed of flow. The fill sprue need not be very large.I am having a harder time imagining a means of melting more metal. You have two crucibles, I wonder how long the large one ,full of molten metal, would retain enough heat for a good pour? If your large crucible were full of melt and surrounded with insulation, could it remain hot enough to use, long enough,` for a half load of your smaller crucible to be melted?
If you had enough metal id say a tapered sprue to the bottom fill bottom to top or a little easier use sodium silicate sand to make a rigid mold that wont wash or move doug jackson over on svseeker did a lot of work with sodium silicate molds and large nibral castings
Never done any casting, so take this idea with a grain if salt, what if you did the horizontal casting at an angle with the heavy side down? Would this keep enough pressure/material in the base of the cannon when cooling?
Let me start by saying I have only cast a few parts, so not an expert at all. Questions I would ask of the experts... 1) Why does it have to be vertical or horizontal? Why can't the cannon form be at 10 to 15 degrees when pouring? 2) Could the cannon's pivot dowels be at the top and bottom of the cannon and be used as entrance and vents to save on material? 3) If casting with the cannon on an angle could the entrance point of the metal connect to the bottom of the central pivot pin and the bottom of the lowest point so it fills from a secondary path after it is halfway full? 4) Would using the dual fill point allow for faster filling without requiring as large of fill passages, resulting in the metal flowing slower through the passages? 5) Can the pour hole to the bottom be an insulated tube so the metal doesn't pick up so much debri and also keep temperature higher on entry path allowing for slower filling through a smaller path with less wasted material?
What if you did a horizontal pour, then stand the mold up vertically? Would that prevent the shrinkage around the breech? Also, could your In-gate be enlarged slightly to create the holding chamber you spoke of?
Because of the molten metal hitting the sand at the bottom... Cast in a 60 degree angle... It's there a possibility to preheat the mold so the metal won't freeze that fast while it rinses down the side wall?
Make an A frame with the mold attached to it with bearings then add a weight to the bottom of the mold and of the A frame and then pour the metal into the mold when the mold is diagonal and then kick whatever is holding the mold diagonally and then it will swing into a vertical position so you can have it made vertically without the metal deforming the bottom of the mold
What if you use a 3inch pipe would that work? ? I really don't know but I'll be getting into melting copper and brass in a couple of months . But will need tips on the best way to melt stuff without failure or something breaking
As for the sand hitting the bottom of the mold, could you get away with stating the pour into the cast on and angle and tilt it back to 90 degrees to finish out the pour? Or am I being too optimistic lol
Former worker in a steel mill here. You should cast it standing, but try to fill the mold from the bottom up. Make a channel from top to bottom beside the cannon core and conect it to the bottom of the cannon. Use the upper end of the cannon as venting hole, and cover the open risers with a thick layer of sand to preserve heat in the metal after the pour. And you could make a thin slurry from Ehanol Alcohol and Bentonite powder to give the inner surface of the Mold a smoother surface. Just a little layer inside the mold. aply with an brush. Try it on a small mold, it will help with the surface texture.
IF you cast in the the same position like in this video, place your entry way on the thickest part of the cannon (The sunken in part) and make a bigger reservour on top with thick walls of sand for insulation so you have 4 Pound extra material there. After the metal is in, cover the Tank with Sand. The metal will shrink inside, and pull metal from the top inside. Sorry fo my poor english, i am from germany and didn´t talk or write much in english. i could bring up some drawings if needed, just give the word.
Ordog213 Wow your knowledge is great!!! I hope to do some casting in the future. Would you share your e-mail address for questions?
My e-mail is pharmacyman@att.net. Give me a shout!!!
With the bentonite part of this, you can get better surface finish with minimal inclusions. Fumed silica will probably work as well. The alcohol prevents the gas expansion issues you would have with a water slurry. 99% isopropanol is available for cheap enough. Another good thing would be to use aluminum to de-gas the brass and increase its strength to something closer to steel.
Your English is very good I didn't knows u weren't a native English speaker until u said so.
I thought of filling from the bottom immediately, but that channel will require quite a bit of extra metal, won't it? He can barely melt enough for start with.
You don't know what you're talking about!!
I mean i don't know what you're talking about because i have never cast anything!! lol ;)
Thoroughly enjoying myself, watching you, in this process. For millenia this was/is how it's done. Cannons, Halibrand wheels, Cyclone Racing Equipment quickchange, and Edelbrock intake manifolds. Life is great !
I’ve been suffering from shrinkage for years. It’s always a bad thing.
Pass on my sympathies to your wife aLONG with my contact info! lol ;)
Put some VIAGRA in your mould.
ruclips.net/video/dcovHHOCtpQ/видео.html
That's what she said! LOL
Never good.
*Try a trapazoid walled mold, where the smallest side is down, therefore making less room for the sand to move, and then use pipe holding clamps (sorry I can not thing of the name of those, Sir) to add a extra mechanism to hold every thing in. I do not have any experience in casting but as someone who is very interested in engineering that is what I think you should try. Also you could try to keep the cast from cooling as fast, but I think the mold shape I described is better.
If I'm right, Please fire the first shot in a huge lump of wet clay.
Hope this works out, can`t wait to see it when it is done, but please reply soon.
I'm so glad you don't swear or curse or lose your mind when you experience a failure....it allows me to watch your channel with my son's!
SO CLOSE!!!!! You are definitely getting there!
You may be correct with the shrinkage .Also, it has been years since my high school foundry class but it seems like an air pocket because the vent was in the middle of the end and not at the high spot. Some gases will escape through the green sand but there is a lot of air to get out of that mold.
Sodium silicate mixed with sand for the mold, then CO2 to harden it. should be strong enough.
My experience is with the lost wax process. Worked at a foundry making the case for turbine engines. Some were 9 feet across. Most were cast with 718 steel.
in future I recommend heating the big chunk first then adding the small bits to reduce oxidization and slag/dross. Can you set the horizontal mould on a 20 degree incline to get your desired pour without going fully vertical?
You could also make a plaster cast of your wood form wrap it in wire then bed it in sand. and then pour into that similar to a soapstone sword cast,
I love watching this series, I wish I had the skill to make just the wood mold you made ! Looking forward to the next video.
Use a side feeder to fill from the bottom up to limit sand breakouts. Having a mass at the top is a good idea too. So your mold wuld be more of a u shape than a single cylynder.
so close! Would holding the mold at a 45 degree angle during the pour help? That way the inlet would absorb the impact of the pour and the rest would funnel down into the actual mold. The only tricky part would be setting it upright to cool after pouring I suppose with weight, temperature, and the integrity of the mold housing to overcome. I love this series, thank you for the vid!
Cannon barrel with steel mass next to it. Subscribed
Having found you today and watched the progression of these videos along with the gunmental ones the thing that sticks out most is your determination. Think of those ads RUclips plays from people saying "Wanna know how I got so rich? By failing over and over"... Yada yada, Thomas Edison, yada yada... I think you get what I'm saying. You're going to succeed because you keep trying, and instead of exerting the most energy on being upset you focus it in on learning what you did wrong. This type of thinking is a dying art, but boy do I really enjoy watching it! Keep it up!
Plaster cap on the bottom to help absorb and spread the impact across the surface area of the sand. Not a metal worker, but it might have helped some, and you aren't mixing too much plaster in with the sand.
Interesting video, I have no experience casting anything other than small lead figures. But I do have a recommendation. Get a copy of Eighteenth Century Gunfounding by Melvin H Jackson and Charel de Beer (Smithsonian Institution Press Washington DC 1974) As the title indicates it is about how mussel loading cannon barrels were cast at the Royal Brass Foundry under the direction of Jan Verbruggen in the 1770s. At the core of the book are 50 illustrations dating to around 1776 that show how cannon barrels were cast and finished at the Royal Brass Works for service in the British Army, to which the authors have provided lengthy caption explaining what has been illustrated. This and the rest of the text provides a layman with a clear explanation of how cannon barrels were made in the 18th century, including mold making, casting and finishing as well as the various problems and difficulties that occurred during the process and how they were overcome.
After watching the video a few times i found out what bugged me for a bit.
You should build a little Helper for holding up your crucible while pouring, a stable place to rest the shaft of your handling tool that provides you with an pived point for rotation and that takes the most of the weight of the material while casting. It would give you more controll over your process because it would allow you to maintain your concentration on the casting process and not on the Crucible itself. If you have to think about how to hold your tools while casting, it takes away from other tasks at hand Something like an stable Saw Horse out of metal with two pecks on top to hold the Handle shaft should work. And it helps tho eaase possible back pain ;)
the flat area is air pocket, you didnt make a vent at the highest part of the mould, also all the dross floats to the top so if you were using the canon to fire after presumably boring out the centre, there is a line of weakness running the length of the cannon which would cause it to explode. Pouring with the brech upwards is the right way to cast a cannon, however the dross still forms at the top end, so you need to cut away a good ammount of the length of the cannon to make sure you remove the pourous metal. Otherwise the end of the cannon is likely to fragment. so make you cannon longer than you need and cut back. Hope this helps.
there are some articles on this regarding the first British made cannons and how they discovered some of these techniques from the Chinese i believe
your not that far out from a complete cast ... keep going you will get it. small vent holes about as thick as a pencil will allow air to escape and will fill with Bronze ... thia can be cut away after.
That is an air pocket. You should have placed a vent up there.
@FarmCraft101 I understand your point. But I think that was an air pocket. You needed an air vent at the highest point!
Definitely not an air pocket. Greensand is very porous and vents air quite readily.
Okay. Well with the vent more material could be poured in and thus compensate for shrinkage.
However if you go vertical pour then maybe a tilt as you pour to not destroy the sand from that long drop.
@FarmCraft101
Also if you try horizontal with an additional vent and you are worried about a small weak spot. That is where you could drill and tap your powder cord drop to ignite the charge. Hope you get what I mean.
Peace bro.
Love your videos.
@FarmCraft101
That's a great idea.
You could still use the same wood pattern to create the vertical mold in two halves. Just need a steel box to keep it together.
There's a video here about a foundry that cast cannons when they were used and they poured on about 30 degree angle!
As far as pouring the molten metal, how about having an assistant or rigging a cradle where you can tilt the cast to about 5 degrees slightly to allow the metal to rather drain down the side at first and once the bottom is covered, tilt the cast vertically and fill again. like pouring a beer without a head. just an off the cuff idea. :)
use the wooden cannon to make a large silicone mold. this would cost quite a bit in silicone but you could use that mold to make a wax cannon and do lost wax casting, letting you melt out the wax before you even pour
On the feeder riser, I've seen others make it out of green sand and have another funnel of green sand over the vents.
Good video. I like how you are unrepentant about making mistakes as you go. All part of the learning.
Keep on casting, awesome work! We are all SOO excited to see the next step! Really cool project!
Vertical pour, but put a cast iron mug or something similar in the bottom. maybe 6" of 3" steel pipe... as a gravity-cavity of sorts. Stops the bottom erosion. Makes a sort of dampner for the falling molten metal. And if you also preheat it, it helps preserve the temps for even pour. In fact, I'd want to preheat the whole damn mold as much as possible.
Try ask King of Random, they have experience casting copper (but not so big casts). They had a ton of failed attempts, until got descent result, so maybe could share few hints and tricks.
Love your tenacity. Can't wait for the next video.
If you want to pour the cannon horizontally, align the trunnions vertically and put a feeder on the top one.
Don't know if anyone already suggested it, maybe pour on a slant, so the metal runs down the side of the casting mold.
I think the mold and the sand casting is going to give a better end product that trying to use foam method as well. That's the way the old timers did it as well as by hand carving out the shape in the form it was intended to end up as shown in their detail to ornamentation of the end products as well in the original casting methods of that era.
13:50 this is universal, no matter the country, the languaje, the age, it happens at least once in life
with lost foam casting, you make a hollow mold of your cast mold, and you use expanding foam to make the actual foam mold, so its a single piece. This is how GM did it with Saturn's engine blocks.
A tapered sprue with some sort or choke to reduce the 2ft fall velocity, then gate in to the bottom and fill it up from the bottom up. Then you have the best of both worlds. I like the way you do things!
Maybe you can use a stand of some sort to start the pour angled and while pouring go to vertical to finish and let it cool?
How about a lost foam cone in the center of the mold to take the initial force of the pour? Provided you make a vertical pour.
I cannot imagine zinc being of benefit to your alloy. I do not remember the name of the company, but there is at least one foundry in the New England area that has been casting bells since a bit before the American Revolution. You may want to ask them about an appropriate alloy to get the strength you want. (it's possible they may have an alloy for cannon in their archives.)
Skipper2384, and Ordog213, Are correct on sprue and gating. This means you'll need a larger crucible yet, or run two furnaces with both crucibles, or go with a smaller "saluting cannon" I think.
In your first video, you mentioned the possibility of using a 4140 sleeve. Check to make sure the two metals do not react badly to each other, would be the last of my advise. Dissimilar metals have been the bane of several adventures in history.
both this and the first are two great videos
I know I'm late but my congratulations
from portugal RESPECT for your work
hi
As a young man we made cannons in the gun shop,always brass shafting. Now as an old man 72 I make them in my shop still shafting and still no failures. lesson# 1 projectile wt. = chamber pressure switch to golf balls, flea market , cheap ammo and you can watch it go
J.B.
Absolutely love this project and these videos. Best of luck on the next pour. I cant wait to see what happens.
When i made my cannon i use a wood pattern like your foam one the poured it and it worked for the most part i still sleeved it to be on the safe side
I'd make some kind of rest for the pour bar to rest in so you can spend energy controlling the pour rather than supporting the crucible.
Use the sand with Sodium Silicate addition (3% to 4% by weight is standard) and set it with CO2. This will make a much tougher, stronger mould. I started my career in a foundry making very large lathe beds (up to 15 / 20 feet long) amongst other things. All of the moulds and cores etc were made by this method. Easy for the hobbyist, no complicated methods. An assistant to lift, assist with pouring would be a very good idea. You need to be pouring very much faster, get the molten metal into the mould as fast as possible to ensure no partial solidification and thus poor surfaces etc.
Could you put a sacraficial ridge along the topside of the cast to catch bubbles and insure a full pour? Sorry for the extreme noob question. Never melted anything hotter than wax, unless you count that time I managed to fuse sand to the bottom of a cast iron pan I wasn't supposed to be using for such things. & that was decades ago. Oh! I burnt my hand with solder around the same time! Oh the adventures of youth...
It's always good to have failures in life because you can always learn from them to improve yourself
that isn't shrink, it is a gas/air pocket. You can tell because it is in the area of the cope(up-right half of the flask) where the shape of the model goes higher than the gates from your pour hole or sprue. You had no risers holes in the cope so the air/gas got trapped and the metal wasnt able to fill out completely. Shrink is generally uniform regardless of which orientation you cast. You could succeed doing it this way again. You would have to add risers to the cope, this would allow the gases to escape from the highest point within the fill cavity.
That does not look like shrinkage. It looks like trapped air. Vent with a welding rod sized holes perhaps?
Full vertical fall seems like it will errode your sand mold resulting in inclusions. Inclined perhaps?
Interesting project at any rate. Thanks for posting.
Engineer here. I did Alu casting at school. Would not be allowed today for H&S reasons. However I digress. Would they have rotated the whole assembly as it cools to strengthen the casting and the way the metal cools/sets? Well done btw. Excellent production. What was that first sketch of? I didn't get that. (Teehee)
I am no expert on this but I think you need to ramp it up and have a person or two helping with the heavy weight pour. As you say do vertically have plenty of metal as hot as you can get it. have plenty of air vent holes at 45 degree angles up the 'spout' and do one big hot quick pour with plenty of support on the cope and the drag so it won't fall over. Also doing it that way means that if you come up short on metal you just have a shorter cannon. Trying to cast it with a hollow bore risks it being cooked. If you drill it later you know it will be true. When you have got the cannon sorted, how about doing a 2 gauge punt gun?
Dont forget to use a ceramic filter when you pour...looking forward to your next attempt!
set the mould under a incline with the top up so that the lowest part of the neck comes above the highest part of the back of the cannon that way you should have good mould fill and not have to deal with the falling metal damaging your sand and should be able to not have a back riser saving you metal also use the bentonite trick from ordog213 works well
I have no experience casting metal but based on pouring water into a soft bottom without digging a hole I think maybe A preheated steel pipe with a cup on the end to slow and redirect the flow that you pull out before topping off the pour.
Why did you pour it from the front of the cannon? Since the back is higher, wouldn't that be a better option to make sure it fills up as it may not have been able to flow from the low from to the high back? Great video, thank you!
When ya go vertical, just tilt the whole mold at a 45 degree angle, then the metal won't slam into the bottom. It seems easier than making a cope that goes to the bottom and fills it up.
wouldnt forged steel be stronger for a bigger boom cast is usually weaker if im not mistaken and you seem to have all the equipment to cut up a big block and make a forged 2 ft. cannon
Use water glass and co2 to make the mold solid.
Made good progress this time, third time's the charm!
I think [pure amateur opinion here] that you should make a larger cope and drag, use the oak pattern in it but allow room for a long sprue beside it so that you can achieve a vertical pour. You will get the accurate casting with no embedded sand, you won't wash out the sides of the sand mould and you will get the concentric cooling from the outside to the inside.
Sounds like a win win win to me.
You should consult Sandrammer. 20 years as a Navy Molder, he might have an answer.
Pour from amidship
I am unsure but might not the molten flow both ways and cool evenly
Mark
The fact that Bronze melts at 125 degrees is great, just leaving the stuff out in the sun made everything so much simpler!
it melts at roughly 1,000 degrees C
@@harrickvharrick3957 *Wooosh*
I wonder if silica sand hardened with co2 would work better for a vertical pour
Can the breach be made wider, so that when it collapses somewhat & you turn the breach down to proper size, all dimensions will be met. Love all the other videos, sorry you failed, but one learns from each failure. We use to call that experimenting, until you hit it. Lots of lock. I am now a subscriber due to your persistence. Big "P".
One final thing: You should think about reinforceing the sand inside the Frame. Just lay in some chicken wire fence after the first layer of sand, and place the make the entry gate and the air vents directly on your modell. Just add dowels in matching holes you drilles before hand. Fill the top part with sand, remove the dowels and then the positive like before. and when you start you casting pocess, DO NOT POUR DIRECT INTO THE ENTRY WAY, because the falling metal can destroy the mold inside. I will draw something up and add you to facebook so i can send it to you if you like.
I'd like to see what you're suggesting. Thanks!
Make your box wider and thicker so you cool the casting slower. Pour on the diagonal.
Also try to add a pocket at the back of the breach to hold extra material
About.the size of a baseball
You know that the initial material is heating up the mold and it's probably solidifying.
Maybe if you used a solid mold made of an even mix of plaster, and sand with a lost foam cannon?
Woulden't it be better if you do a gypsum mold pour? Make a 2 Piece gypsum mold for your cannon and reinforce it with a wooden casing and than do a vertical pour. The only thing you have to consider is to let the gypsum cure and dry completely and before you make the mold you have to lightly oil your pattern to prevent it from sticking to your mold.
You cannot cast it on its side unless you going to sleeve it. you can save money by putting the bronze you want to melt onto but not closing the exhaust. it also removes water and stops it splattering. can even explode from steam. Your fill spout is way to small as it must draw from there as the metal shrinks. On the top of your in-gate you will see if your degassing was good as the metal should hollow out and not rise. my first attempt was horizontal and it looked good but the trunnions were hollow which we only found on firing .
There are a lot of professionals giving advice here, but let me give a redneck’s two cents. Cover the bottom end of the halves of your form with plaster. You’ll get the benefits of the kind of vertical casting you talked about, but have a much stronger surface for your falling metal to contact with. If you thing the metal will stay molten long enough to fill the mold from the bottom, do it that way. Without a pre heated mold though, I’d be concerned about it freezing up before it’s full, it looked like you were getting a bit cold even on this horizontal pour.
I didn't know Grizzly sold cannon casting form boxes! I guess they really do sell everything!! Just Kidding... My Cannon shrinks when it gets cold as well... not kidding.
It is not wrong to combine methods. You could make foam sprues , and assemble the same mold as this try. A tapered sprue made of foam could lay alongside the cannon. Planks clamped top and bottom would allow you to rotate the mold to vertical position. A removable panel would then expose fill and riser openings. A strainer can help reduce sand and slag and also help moderate speed of flow. The fill sprue need not be very large.I am having a harder time imagining a means of melting more metal. You have two crucibles, I wonder how long the large one ,full of molten metal, would retain enough heat for a good pour? If your large crucible were full of melt and surrounded with insulation, could it remain hot enough to use, long enough,` for a half load of your smaller crucible to be melted?
17:40 That plot twist tho.
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If you had enough metal id say a tapered sprue to the bottom fill bottom to top or a little easier use sodium silicate sand to make a rigid mold that wont wash or move doug jackson over on svseeker did a lot of work with sodium silicate molds and large nibral castings
schoul'dnt the vent at the higest point of the mold ? So maybe the bubble would much smaller i think...but great work!
Any chance you could try and rotate the mould as it cools? I wonder if it would have any effect with the roundness of the cast.
Never done any casting, so take this idea with a grain if salt, what if you did the horizontal casting at an angle with the heavy side down? Would this keep enough pressure/material in the base of the cannon when cooling?
Very interesting. Tell me when you glued the pieces of oak together, why did you place a sheet of paper between the wood, thanks Terry
So the pieces could be split after turning into a two piece pattern.
its nice when u have the right tools for the job. q? what was the purpose of the news paper when gluing the wood?
I laughed so hard at the first drawing...then you threw it🤣🤣
13:47, dude, ive been having a bad few days, thank you for that, i needed that laugh
Let me start by saying I have only cast a few parts, so not an expert at all. Questions I would ask of the experts... 1) Why does it have to be vertical or horizontal? Why can't the cannon form be at 10 to 15 degrees when pouring?
2) Could the cannon's pivot dowels be at the top and bottom of the cannon and be used as entrance and vents to save on material?
3) If casting with the cannon on an angle could the entrance point of the metal connect to the bottom of the central pivot pin and the bottom of the lowest point so it fills from a secondary path after it is halfway full?
4) Would using the dual fill point allow for faster filling without requiring as large of fill passages, resulting in the metal flowing slower through the passages?
5) Can the pour hole to the bottom be an insulated tube so the metal doesn't pick up so much debri and also keep temperature higher on entry path allowing for slower filling through a smaller path with less wasted material?
Have you considered using old pennies as a source for copper? It's legal to melt them, as long as it's not for a "fraudulent" purpose.
What if you did a horizontal pour, then stand the mold up vertically? Would that prevent the shrinkage around the breech? Also, could your In-gate be enlarged slightly to create the holding chamber you spoke of?
Cut into the dimple and make it into a breach loader but use a smaller caliber ball
you may as well do aluminum bronze. check out ASTM B148-18. that is the standard most bronze pipe valves and whatnot are cast to these days.
Looks like it wasn't quite hot enough, also try your vent at the highest point of the back. Other than that looks great
Great stuff. Any fool can post a video when everything went right. This is so much better. Good luck.
you could coat the back layer with wax to absorb the impact and then it will melt off.
Use jewelry investment as a mould, heat mould so metal flows, have channels through to allow flow
Because of the molten metal hitting the sand at the bottom... Cast in a 60 degree angle... It's there a possibility to preheat the mold so the metal won't freeze that fast while it rinses down the side wall?
Dang. Even the failures are beautiful!
Make an A frame with the mold attached to it with bearings then add a weight to the bottom of the mold and of the A frame and then pour the metal into the mold when the mold is diagonal and then kick whatever is holding the mold diagonally and then it will swing into a vertical position so you can have it made vertically without the metal deforming the bottom of the mold
I get usimg the jointer and plainer. What i never understand is why take a solid peice of wood cut in half and glue back together
I glued newspaper in between, so I could separate the pieces after turning, making a split pattern.
What if you use a 3inch pipe would that work? ? I really don't know but I'll be getting into melting copper and brass in a couple of months . But will need tips on the best way to melt stuff without failure or something breaking
To keep it from just smacking the bottom of the vertical mold try pouring it like a draft beer
Nice pattern! Your cannon just came out with an "additional feature" a built in sight system. Drill it and shoot it!
As for the sand hitting the bottom of the mold, could you get away with stating the pour into the cast on and angle and tilt it back to 90 degrees to finish out the pour? Or am I being too optimistic lol
Why was the vent not at the highest point of the mold to ensure the void was completely filled?