Welcome to my FlamingFurnace, backyard metal casting blog.

Hi everyone, I mainly focus on metal casting projects using recycled scrap aluminum and other accessories in the pattern creations.
Aluminum is a very versatile material and I would like to promote the awareness of aluminum recycling via different metal casting projects.

Feel free to check my YouTube channel where I provide detailed explanations, tips & tutorials for best backyard aluminum casting methods, homemade foundry equipment & of course the importance of safety when working with molten aluminum.

So remember recycle and Enjoy my blog ;-)

January 04, 2013

Foundry Sand Casting Project For My Kids Room

recycling scrap aluminum
This is my first post for 2013, in this post I will explain how I created decorative animal shapes casted from aluminum. I decided I wanted to make a big toy drawer to clear all the mess in my kids room, at first I thought  of making just MDF shapes and paint them but then I thought it will be really cool if the animal shapes where from solid shiny aluminum. I collected some scrap metal and came across an old unused pressure cooker, so I decided to melt it in my homemade foundry and recycle it into something new. The first step was of course creating the casting patterns. I used 5mm MDF to create the elephants, dolphins and kangaroo pattern and green sand to create the sand mold impression.
sand casting process sand casting process foundry flask cope part foundry flask drag part
I started first making the sand mold for the elephants and dolphin's. As you can see the flask was a bit small for the kangaroos pattern so I used another smaller wooden flask for them. I also used green sand in order to create the pattern impressions in the sand, the process was easy working with a flat pattern.
wooden foundry flask cope part wooden foundry flask with patternfoundry flask covered with parting powder
After casting the aluminum animal shapes I cleaned all the extra aluminum with a metal file then sanded it with an electric sander. Once the cleaning part was done it was time to drill the brass screw holes and to start the polishing process. I think this process is the most time consuming part and it takes a lot of patience to get a
good result ;-)
after opening the foundry flask first stage of cleaning the aluminum casting all aluminum casting together kangaroo aluminum castingusing metal file to clean aluminum casting
I was really happy with the final results and it looks very nice hanging on the new toy drawer. I'm now thinking on how to create a larger pattern of some sort of shape but that's for a future post when i"ll have a new idea ;-)
new kids toy drawer aluminum shapes attached to toy drawer aluminum casting