You need to bake the plaster mold in an oven for 4 hours at 500 degrees Fahrenheit to expell all moisture and get it hot from your forge exhaust before pouring
Hey ive seen other channels add borax to the metal when its melted before pouring. I believe that its used to get all the impurities out of the metal, and it usually turns out to be a good pour. Great vid man keep it rollin👌👌
yeah i now normally use borax just before i skim the brass but with this plaster mold i didnt really care how the top of the poured mold turned out as i was just gonna grind it down smooth but as this pour was basically a fail i didnt worry too much about the ingots appearance . Oh well like my friend Paul from Paul's Garage says it shouldnt be considered a fail if you learn something new. Thats a good philosophy to have as this way i can call %95 of my videos Learning sessions and not Fails. 😄👍
I didn't cook mine long enough either. Not only do you got to get the moisture out but I think you got to get all the wax out too and even wax residue is enough to cause the brass to boil could be wrong
Made some mighty fine looking gold sponge scouring pads - just don't use them on the good teflon saucepans and you'll be right mate -- another lesson learned mate!
+BeachsideHank yeah pretty interesting I thought , steel pins and screws always be floating on my brass and so easy to just skim off . When I melted a big heap of padlocks in an older video all the steel pins and steel shackles just floated on top for easy removal 👍🏻.
How long did you let the plaster cure before pouring? Did you bake it? There looked to be an awful lot of moisture left in it yet, which is probably what gave you the bubbly finish on your casting.
Yeah it sat inside my house for a few weeks after it set and i even put it in the oven slowly increasing the temp t melt out the wax. The mold was in the oven for about an hour at about 120 degress celsius before i poured into it but yes there was clearly way tooo much moisture still in there so i recon ill stick to kilned clay and sandcasting. Although i will give the plaster another go ill just maybe tweak the mixure with alot of sand added instead of pure plaster if im doing a casting thats not high in detail.
bigstackD I've never done pure plaster before usually 50/50 with sand. Generally burning out the mold is enough to dry it. I think something else was going on seemed like a lot of flames when you poured but that could be zinc burning off...not sure. definitely something was making some gases bubbling the bottom.
+ProjectTube yes certainly was interesting a lot of water was probably still in the mold as it was extremely cold to the touch after a few weeks sitting inside . having said that I did put it in the oven at a little over 100°C for over an hour , still quite odd . I have a bit of plaster left so I will try 50-50 with some nice fine sand at some point I reckon.👍🏻😁
Been there done that. It's the wax, when you melted it out it sucked into the plaster. If you melt the wax out that way you have to bring the temp up in a kiln until the wax burns out and stops smoking.
also when casting with plaster always burn out the wax melting it out is not enough. i use a oxy torch and hold the flame to it till it doesnt make orange fire or smoke then its good to go it was not water as much as wax you can tell by the flare up and orange colured flame after you poured. i hope this helps plaster is tricky,pressure casting works well to fill all the crevises .like rotory casting
Yeah i recon any more plaster casting i do will not be an open cast like this one (if thats what its called) . Ide love to eventually get a 3d printer but right now its not really an option. Also i tried to purchase some PetroBond sand for my castings and bloody customs wont let it into Australia as its soil based😤😤, Bugger! well at least i got my money back for it.
thank you for replying. i love your channel. i like the oil burning aussie fellow as well . thank australia for utes ,Foster’s big cans , jdm toyota mods, roo,s and didgeridoo's to name a few. and being one of the last bad ass place's left on earth. the usa loves you guys. shame about the guns, but you guys are still awesome. lots of talc will reduce some surface poriusity.ive been casting all metals for about 30+ years you do very well at it, its harder than most folk's think and can really suprise you some days, keep up the great vids i love them, also i make my own petro bond with trans fluid, fine white sand, like the kind you use for lizards and snakes, and bentonite clay made from ground up cheap cat litter , put in a blender that you don't care about ,turn it to very fine flour , there are a bunch of mixes avalible on the net a little google time and you can make all you will ever need .tip use little trans fluid as you can get away with other wise you will have some burn off and bubbles,and it really smokes and stinks do it in vented area,also if you want it to give you a good surface use a little more bentonite clay in the mix ,play around with the mix till it suits your needs , keep up the great work love your vid's we all here at our metal shop foundry subbed and watch .cant wait to see your future projects god bless. :)
Hey! I'm back. Sorry if I couldn't comment on every video for the past weeks, I was in vacation and decided to take only 1 single phone with me as I wanted to enjoy relaxing not browsing the internet. About the steam and moisture from the plaster, it's not only that. Notice how the plaster and molten metal were "catching fire", it was indeed mostly moisture but it was other materials in the plaster that had very low melting points that were melting, boiling and catching fire on contact with the molten metal. Also, about you saying that, this will be the last time using this crucible, consider my idea from several videos ago. Try using ceramic (with ceramic wool / fibers which have a ridiculously high melting point, and you have a low chance of your crucible cracking if you heat up and cool down the container twice or three times, orrrrr, use a steel crucible, most likely the bottom of a fire extinguisher, the walls are thick and we all know that steel has a high melting point.)
Interesting Video... My understanding of plaster is that it is shocky. Meaning it needs to be brought up to a certain temperature and held at the temperature before it can be used. The plaster is calcium oxide and it processes something like this: Calcium oxide powder > Liquid Calcium hydroxide > Solid Calcium bicarbonate hydroxide. It could be both water and carbon dioxide really. I need to do some glass work one of these days and see if i can get plaster to work for cast glass.
Cool glass casting in plaster thatll be an interesting vid be sure to let me know if you do a video ill check that out for sure. Yeah i think ill stick with kilned clay and sandcasting for now my friend.
Usually ill just use a Clay Graphite crucible as they can be heated up to the melting point of steel. Although i wouldnt want to try melt steel in one as thats right on its heating limit (plus i cant get my crucible that hot anyway)👍
Sorry for commenting on an older video, but I have to ask how much shrinkage did you observe on these? I want to cast some exact sized sword parts on brass and I'm worried it will be too small
I don't know if you got your answer, but I would recommend a zinc-free brass. Zinc's boiling point is somewhere around the melting point of brass, so you can lose metal at any point that the brass is molten. I would recommend red brass or this nickel brass I recently read about.
The plaster mold should be dry . You can add some sand powder to the plaster and mixed together and then making mold then let the mold be dry , put the mold in the oven and then do bronze casting.
@bigstackD Casting what is cheapest? Looking to instead of buy aluminium to, just melt drinks cans for a small mold so to test a machine on (small as in 25mm by 25mm by 25mm or something to machine cube at top (below to still clamp) and to see how precise is)
Omg the brass look disturbing, maybe you should keep them with the skull collection hehe. But seriously, that plaster held up pretty unexpectedly... I tried once pouring in plaster and it shattered immediately. What about the crucible, when you hit it with the hammer, did it take an amount of force to break it, or did it shatter immediately?
The crucible surprisingly actually took a few hits with the hammer when it was first attacked but as soon as it lost its cup shape the walls of the crucible were like in the vid and felt almost like a big cookie. It was so soft and easy to break.its structure was still pretty in-tacked and strong but a few of the cracks almost went all the way through so i recon the crucible would have held its form perfectly but it would have started having a few pin hole leaks coming from it very soon. And i have enough trouble pouring at the best of times so atleast this will eliminate 1 possible drama for me.
Why didn't you completely dry out your plaster mold first and then preheat it prior to pouring? You would have picked up the text details in the mold beautifully if you did. No hassle, we're all learning 👍.
Moisture made the surface very extraordinary :) Cool! Did you dry it on the air or put it into the oven? I think I understand why you've decided to destroy your damaged crucible :) If you didn't destroy it now than before the next casting you would think: "Well, it's in a bad shape but I can use it once again - the last time. :)" Congrats with a new purchase!
Yeah mate i recon i got my use out of it so this time ,ill take a 5 second video after each use on the new crucible and maybe stick it all together and make a quick video on the durability of the crucible and keep track of how many pours and what i pour. Usually i use 1 crucible for each metal but i dont mind too much using the same with brass and copper as a bit of cross contamination doesn't bother me with those 2 metals.although if my other crucible comes soon ill just use them for seperate metals to get a better idea of its longevity.
+11robert11 yeah it was definitely still moist. It sat on a bench inside my house for 2 weeks but still felt very cold to the touch. My friend has access to a kiln at the local craft store he said next time I should just use clay for the molds and said if I kilned plaster of Paris it could explode so back to clay or sand casting for me 👍🏻.
I'd say you need to bake out the moisture in the plaster before trying to pour it. Then it would probably produce a lot less bubbling But that aside, fail or not I really like how they came out
Hey buddy its just a DFC Gas burner and works well but its definately not fast i just cut out all the waiting time as brass usually takes about 60-70 minutes and copper is about 80-90 minutes from burner on until pouring time👍
Dat poor crucible dough.... :p That said, I'd be very reluctant to use plaster to make a mould out of it: far too much water needed to blend it with, wich remains in the final product. And boiling water under molten metal is not good.
indeed, my friend said even putting plaster paris molds in kilns heating very slow t evaporate moisture usually results in the mold exploding or blowing itself apart. Ill stick to clay and sandcasting i recon.
bigstackD BTW I was thinking if you have some high quality casting sand I could send a half penny and you could sand cast some of them they look really cool it's half of a large cent I think
You need to bake the plaster mold in an oven for 4 hours at 500 degrees Fahrenheit to expell all moisture and get it hot from your forge exhaust before pouring
😉
I keep finding ones I missed. It's great, like presents after Christmas 😜🤣🤣
I love these in the beginning videos, your new forges are definitely more efficient!! 👌🍻
It’s got an awesome sponge-like look, as if they were plucked from a corral.
Hey ive seen other channels add borax to the metal when its melted before pouring. I believe that its used to get all the impurities out of the metal, and it usually turns out to be a good pour. Great vid man keep it rollin👌👌
yeah i now normally use borax just before i skim the brass but with this plaster mold i didnt really care how the top of the poured mold turned out as i was just gonna grind it down smooth but as this pour was basically a fail i didnt worry too much about the ingots appearance . Oh well like my friend Paul from Paul's Garage says it shouldnt be considered a fail if you learn something new. Thats a good philosophy to have as this way i can call %95 of my videos Learning sessions and not Fails. 😄👍
bigstackD 😂 that is true words to live by. Love the vids man👌
Assassin Cow 😁👍🏻
I didn't cook mine long enough either. Not only do you got to get the moisture out but I think you got to get all the wax out too and even wax residue is enough to cause the brass to boil could be wrong
Made some mighty fine looking gold sponge scouring pads - just don't use them on the good teflon saucepans and you'll be right mate -- another lesson learned mate!
+Pillobird yeah there's so much to learn you would think I would've figured it all out by now. Oh well I'm not going anywhere so no rush😉👍🏻
Didn't know about steel rising to the top of a brass melt, even failure has some nuggets of knowledge in it. ☺
+BeachsideHank yeah pretty interesting I thought , steel pins and screws always be floating on my brass and so easy to just skim off . When I melted a big heap of padlocks in an older video all the steel pins and steel shackles just floated on top for easy removal 👍🏻.
Brass is always heavier than steel
This is such a cool ‚not wanted result’ I‘ll need to try this too!!! 🥳
How long did you let the plaster cure before pouring? Did you bake it? There looked to be an awful lot of moisture left in it yet, which is probably what gave you the bubbly finish on your casting.
Yeah it sat inside my house for a few weeks after it set and i even put it in the oven slowly increasing the temp t melt out the wax. The mold was in the oven for about an hour at about 120 degress celsius before i poured into it but yes there was clearly way tooo much moisture still in there so i recon ill stick to kilned clay and sandcasting. Although i will give the plaster another go ill just maybe tweak the mixure with alot of sand added instead of pure plaster if im doing a casting thats not high in detail.
bigstackD I've never done pure plaster before usually 50/50 with sand. Generally burning out the mold is enough to dry it. I think something else was going on seemed like a lot of flames when you poured but that could be zinc burning off...not sure. definitely something was making some gases bubbling the bottom.
+ProjectTube yes certainly was interesting a lot of water was probably still in the mold as it was extremely cold to the touch after a few weeks sitting inside . having said that I did put it in the oven at a little over 100°C for over an hour , still quite odd . I have a bit of plaster left so I will try 50-50 with some nice fine sand at some point I reckon.👍🏻😁
Been there done that. It's the wax, when you melted it out it sucked into the plaster. If you melt the wax out that way you have to bring the temp up in a kiln until the wax burns out and stops smoking.
Oh ok cheers matey I’ll definitely do that next time😁👍🏻
also when casting with plaster always burn out the wax melting it out is not enough. i use a oxy torch and hold the flame to it till it doesnt make orange fire or smoke then its good to go it was not water as much as wax you can tell by the flare up and orange colured flame after you poured. i hope this helps plaster is tricky,pressure casting works well to fill all the crevises .like rotory casting
Yeah i recon any more plaster casting i do will not be an open cast like this one (if thats what its called) . Ide love to eventually get a 3d printer but right now its not really an option. Also i tried to purchase some PetroBond sand for my castings and bloody customs wont let it into Australia as its soil based😤😤, Bugger! well at least i got my money back for it.
thank you for replying. i love your channel. i like the oil burning aussie fellow as well . thank australia for utes ,Foster’s big cans , jdm toyota mods, roo,s and didgeridoo's to name a few. and being one of the last bad ass place's left on earth. the usa loves you guys. shame about the guns, but you guys are still awesome. lots of talc will reduce some surface poriusity.ive been casting all metals for about 30+ years you do very well at it, its harder than most folk's think and can really suprise you some days, keep up the great vids i love them, also i make my own petro bond with trans fluid, fine white sand, like the kind you use for lizards and snakes, and bentonite clay made from ground up cheap cat litter , put in a blender that you don't care about ,turn it to very fine flour , there are a bunch of mixes avalible on the net a little google time and you can make all you will ever need .tip use little trans fluid as you can get away with other wise you will have some burn off and bubbles,and it really smokes and stinks do it in vented area,also if you want it to give you a good surface use a little more bentonite clay in the mix ,play around with the mix till it suits your needs , keep up the great work love your vid's we all here at our metal shop foundry subbed and watch .cant wait to see your future projects god bless. :)
Hey! I'm back. Sorry if I couldn't comment on every video for the past weeks, I was in vacation and decided to take only 1 single phone with me as I wanted to enjoy relaxing not browsing the internet.
About the steam and moisture from the plaster, it's not only that. Notice how the plaster and molten metal were "catching fire", it was indeed mostly moisture but it was other materials in the plaster that had very low melting points that were melting, boiling and catching fire on contact with the molten metal.
Also, about you saying that, this will be the last time using this crucible, consider my idea from several videos ago.
Try using ceramic (with ceramic wool / fibers which have a ridiculously high melting point, and you have a low chance of your crucible cracking if you heat up and cool down the container twice or three times, orrrrr, use a steel crucible, most likely the bottom of a fire extinguisher, the walls are thick and we all know that steel has a high melting point.)
+Killer Memestar ok cool cheers mate I just assumed it was moisture. Well shows what I know .
Dry the mold before casting may explode molten in your face I wish you safety😍😘
Cheers matey👍🏻
Also, hot liquid vs colt mold. Heat the mold first, then fill.
Interesting Video...
My understanding of plaster is that it is shocky. Meaning it needs to be brought up to a certain temperature and held at the temperature before it can be used.
The plaster is calcium oxide and it processes something like this:
Calcium oxide powder > Liquid Calcium hydroxide > Solid Calcium bicarbonate hydroxide.
It could be both water and carbon dioxide really.
I need to do some glass work one of these days and see if i can get plaster to work for cast glass.
Cool glass casting in plaster thatll be an interesting vid be sure to let me know if you do a video ill check that out for sure. Yeah i think ill stick with kilned clay and sandcasting for now my friend.
If you are able to cast it smooth then you will have awesome copper "gold" bullion bars how awesome is that!!
Copper bullion mmmmm🤘😏
I use steel crucible it's good and hard enough to facing very hot temperature
Usually ill just use a Clay Graphite crucible as they can be heated up to the melting point of steel. Although i wouldnt want to try melt steel in one as thats right on its heating limit (plus i cant get my crucible that hot anyway)👍
that bar like something out of the piramid
Matey, Love you Very Much, May God bless you with more❣️
What was the composition of the crucible that had it's final melt? And the new one?
Sorry for commenting on an older video, but I have to ask how much shrinkage did you observe on these? I want to cast some exact sized sword parts on brass and I'm worried it will be too small
I don't know if you got your answer, but I would recommend a zinc-free brass. Zinc's boiling point is somewhere around the melting point of brass, so you can lose metal at any point that the brass is molten. I would recommend red brass or this nickel brass I recently read about.
@@Earthstar_Review Is brass free of zinc still brass?
Maybe, but is aluminum brass _really_ brass?
The plaster mold should be dry . You can add some sand powder to the plaster and mixed together and then making mold then let the mold be dry , put the mold in the oven and then do bronze casting.
What is the best way to make a core for a cup/mug?
A shiny golden sponge for next time you have a spill :)
yeah and we all know that will be pretty soon 😄
Fail or not, it's still enjoyable to watch.
Not a bad first attempt, you could always try green sand the next time 👍🏻
yeah i recon ill stick to sand casting or clay😀
@bigstackD Casting what is cheapest? Looking to instead of buy aluminium to, just melt drinks cans for a small mold so to test a machine on (small as in 25mm by 25mm by 25mm or something to machine cube at top (below to still clamp) and to see how precise is)
I liked the lava rock look on the flat side 9f the ingot. But the other side? Cutting wheel, sand flat, and move on.
Omg the brass look disturbing, maybe you should keep them with the skull collection hehe. But seriously, that plaster held up pretty unexpectedly... I tried once pouring in plaster and it shattered immediately. What about the crucible, when you hit it with the hammer, did it take an amount of force to break it, or did it shatter immediately?
The crucible surprisingly actually took a few hits with the hammer when it was first attacked but as soon as it lost its cup shape the walls of the crucible were like in the vid and felt almost like a big cookie. It was so soft and easy to break.its structure was still pretty in-tacked and strong but a few of the cracks almost went all the way through so i recon the crucible would have held its form perfectly but it would have started having a few pin hole leaks coming from it very soon. And i have enough trouble pouring at the best of times so atleast this will eliminate 1 possible drama for me.
Why didn't you completely dry out your plaster mold first and then preheat it prior to pouring? You would have picked up the text details in the mold beautifully if you did. No hassle, we're all learning 👍.
Moisture made the surface very extraordinary :) Cool! Did you dry it on the air or put it into the oven? I think I understand why you've decided to destroy your damaged crucible :) If you didn't destroy it now than before the next casting you would think: "Well, it's in a bad shape but I can use it once again - the last time. :)" Congrats with a new purchase!
Yeah mate i recon i got my use out of it so this time ,ill take a 5 second video after each use on the new crucible and maybe stick it all together and make a quick video on the durability of the crucible and keep track of how many pours and what i pour. Usually i use 1 crucible for each metal but i dont mind too much using the same with brass and copper as a bit of cross contamination doesn't bother me with those 2 metals.although if my other crucible comes soon ill just use them for seperate metals to get a better idea of its longevity.
Will commenting on all 250+ vids get me a solid chance in the giveaway? I love your videos 😁😎. Ingot is my favorite pupper on the tubes!
Merely a suggestion now that you have AUS, USD, Euros, and Pesos. What about CAD? Canadian dollars
darkmerchant1 yeah matey couldn’t hurt to put it in a few for sure👍🏻😁
Plaster of Paris technique is difficult. I've had plenty of fail videos of it lately.
Only BigstackD will say "damn these are ugly, they'll fit in nicely." lmao
Yeah I set the bar pretty low on my channel for obvious reasons 😉
Maybe needed to cure the plaster longer looks like moisture was still in thr mould
+11robert11 yeah it was definitely still moist. It sat on a bench inside my house for 2 weeks but still felt very cold to the touch. My friend has access to a kiln at the local craft store he said next time I should just use clay for the molds and said if I kilned plaster of Paris it could explode so back to clay or sand casting for me 👍🏻.
I'd say you need to bake out the moisture in the plaster before trying to pour it. Then it would probably produce a lot less bubbling
But that aside, fail or not I really like how they came out
+Albin9000 yeah they certainly are different but a welcome addition to my little ingot family😁
I like your videos!
Look on the bright side you made brass sponge/foam
+joe garrow touché my friend 👍🏻
Hey buddy its just a DFC Gas burner and works well but its definately not fast i just cut out all the waiting time as brass usually takes about 60-70 minutes and copper is about 80-90 minutes from burner on until pouring time👍
Looks like a rice krispie treat or a loaf or bread
Probably also u don't need the boiling point but the melting point
Wow that's probably the wettest mold I've seen used lol
This bars looks like cheese, Nice!!!
I want this plaster
Those look like brass Rice Crispy bars!
Amazing
Have said it before. Lets try this and see what happens. It works, Cool. It didn't work, Oh well. Good Video. #BigstackD
milled thin them would make good knife or sword handles :)
Yeah milling them would be cool but i plan on sandcasting some better handles for small swords and daggers in the future 😀
casting is funny isnt it some times the "messup's" turn out to be really cool :)
Should have let your molds dry out mo!
maybe plaster is not a good idea as you see， they has gas it cause bubble
+Stephen Su yeah if I do make molds on plaster again I'll make sure there a hell of a lot drier b4 I use them . Naybe I'll just stick to clay.
The ingots look like giant gold nuggets.
Yeah it does . Also these earlier videos turn out pretty bad but I still enjoyed doing them 😁👍🏻
MAN yo Crucible is SHOT!!! LOL Oh you said that already. ROFLMAO at my own joke! Yuck, yuck, yuck!
🤣😂
here to win giveaway
Nice
Dat poor crucible dough.... :p
That said, I'd be very reluctant to use plaster to make a mould out of it: far too much water needed to blend it with, wich remains in the final product. And boiling water under molten metal is not good.
indeed, my friend said even putting plaster paris molds in kilns heating very slow t evaporate moisture usually results in the mold exploding or blowing itself apart. Ill stick to clay and sandcasting i recon.
Your furnace needs a rim job XD
bigstackD XD
bigstackD BTW I was thinking if you have some high quality casting sand I could send a half penny and you could sand cast some of them they look really cool it's half of a large cent I think
+joe garrow I have a few pennies/half pennies from different places what country are the ones your talking about from
Biscuit brass
...