Backyard aluminum casting, vol. 1

This was my first attempt on casting aluminum at home, did this more than year ago in august. After this, I've melted even more aluminum few different times and learned a lot about it. I'll write another post about it later.
Before this, I had done casting patterns and taken them to real foundry to cast. Check my older posts to get more info.
Everything was done with budget of "next to nothing".

Got these bricks from a friend,  they're taken apart from old demolished house. 
Two pipes going under all charcoal, and compressed air with less than one bar pressure turns this brick-pile to a furnace. Bricks were covered with sand to make it airtight, or at least near airtight.

                                                              Check out this hellfire!

Bucket full of scrap aluminum. These were old moped parts, Saab valve cover, compressor parts etc, in their earlier life. Got them from another friend. All this was hacked to small pieces, it makes it faster to melt. I'm using only aluminum that was originally cast, not sheetmetal or tincans.

Box was made of tubing I had laying around. Filled it with casting sand, and poured molten metal in.
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And this is what was found inside casting mold after it was allowed to cool... looks like a fuel block! Not perfect, though, so more practising was needed. More about that later on some other posting.

Most common question is "can I use empty beer cans, I have lots of them". Answer is yes you can, but. You'll still need real cast aluminum material, and when you've melted them, then you can throw few empty beer cans into the molten metal.

That's all for now, next time with better pictures and even more detailed info.
Until then,

take care,
Otto

Got my car running!

Not so new news anymore... but I got my car running 'bout month ago. During four months period, engine and trans got new life. All works was made by me, with just minor help from other people.

Original thought was to paint car, but when I was working with engine, I noticed that that idea was born dead... So now I had trans -plus- engine to repair.
New camshaft was needed, so I did not want to use old lifters anymore. New chain and gears were easy to replace at the same time. Chain is same one that big block Ford uses.

Old oil pump wasn't much worn out, but because I was already working on this, and parts were reasonably priced, I thought "whatta heck, I'll buy it"! New oil pump was installed...

Freeze plugs -which I had installed in 2004- were totally rusted out, few of them already spillin' water through them. Well, new freeze plugs were used. Also, I reworked heads. All valvetrain parts were cleaned also inside. Took quite a lot time to clean heads in and outside, waterpassages were cleaned also.
New waterpump was bolted on. Wouldn't need to, but my hot rod has same engine, and '57 had aluminum waterpump on it, so it was replaced with cast iron one, so aluminum one can now be polished for '31. 
New fuelpump was also used, because I had one unused layin' around in my garage. Old one worked, but was spittin' oil out sometimes...

New paint! Parts which are being hidden here, were painted earlier. Colour is not any already mixed colour, it was mixed between two already available colours, plus all metalflakes changed to bigger ones.

Reworked tri-power carbs also. It's simple as one-two-three. Anyone saying something else is wrong.

Put it all together... Looks great!
It is '57 364 cid nailhead with Offenhauser 3x2 intake (cast in 2002) ,vintage carbs, Eelco linkage, Offy fuel block, unknown fuel pressure gauge, vintage Mallory Rev-Pol distributor, valve covers designed by me and cast in Finland, and valley pan by me, cast in Finland. Polished all aluminum myself, including intake and distributor...

 Between them rails again!

First start!

Home at last! Got car running on tuesday, registerated in wednesday, and on thursday we went on a little trip to Sweden! So it was kind of hurry... Drove about 1000 kilometers, most of it in rain without wipers, and got back home also. It seems that engine and trans repairs were succesful!

Photos from Sweden trip coming later...

Some kind of a milestone

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Wanted to share this, I see this as a some kind of milestone on my car-builder’s –life. Hopefully my way of telling this through longer way does not bore you, but for me this means something big.

Remember early 2000’s?

Internet wasn’t available easily & cheap for everyone as it is today.  

Nostalgic stuff wasn’t as common as it is today.

Shades from 90’s could still be seen and billet parts were advertised on most magazines.

Even so,  you can’t say that old parts would’ve been dirt cheap, no way! In my opinion, they just didn’t move as much as they do today, which made them expensive. Lots of used, interesting parts were stored on the shelfs, attics and other places where they could be forgotten. People maybe could not imagine that them old parts would be so eagerly wanted by some nostalgia-freaks.

By that time, E-bay was new thing, and when you could find some old parts from there, they were sold for unbelieveable prices. Think about it, seven or eight hundered dollars for valve covers!
But that was the way how you could get them old, rare parts by that time; with money or luck, often you needed both.
Nowadays we have repops of old covers –such as Eelco- but ten years ago… well, I checked Moon, but did not like what they offered; fins were low and whole valve cover looked wayyy too much computer-designed. Offenhauser had quite good looking valve cover. I really, really, liked the ends of that cover but on the center it has big logo, it has hole for oil filler cap, it has place for bolts… hey c’mon, there ain’t room for fins anymore! I want fins!
FINS damn it! Forms!
Figures!
Shapes!
Form before function!


So, what to do? Break a bank and buy old covers -or- buy a cover that has shape that I don’t like?

My friend Jouni told me that he had idea of casting some aluminum parts as a window  frames of his chopped ’59 Dodge. That was when I started thinking casting and it’s possibilities. Thinking-phase took long time, possibly two years.
Seeking info ‘bout casting through internet did not bring much… but luckily, at the time, I was working as a carpenter at workshop where we had one ex- casting pattern –maker. He had made casting patterns for ship parts during sixties (how cool is that!) and told me trick or two. He had unbelievably high skills in woodworking and unbelievably low skills in social life and delivery of speech… so back to search Google.
I also found small foundry (big ones possibly would’ve not helped with this one) that would cast aluminum, and went there to ask “stupid questions”.
Did not check library back then, now I’ve been there too, haha.
As told earlier, I worked as a carpenter back then and had possibility to use woodworking machines during daytime.  I did something every once in a while, took part home to sand it, and back to work again to do something. Not keeping horry with it, only doing this occasionally. Noticed that at home with my own peace –without possibility of boss coming to lurk behind my neck- I’d be able to do shaping and sanding more concentrated. Creating shape is not something that you (or at least I) don’t wan’t to do in a horry.Now when I know how pattern making happens, it would be faster to accomplish similar project… but now I don’t have access to them machines anymore!
Took photos of every phase of project and wanted to share whole thing at Hokey Ass Message Board. It was strictly coincidental that it happened to be Tech Week when I wrote the text. 
Thread got many comments and I won number one prize on the Tech Week.

At that point I thought this would’ve been highest point of attention that  my valve covers would get. Did not have many thoughts about covers or written thread, not until I logged in. People from everywhere around United States and some from Europe wanted to buy valve covers from me! Few of private mails were also about selling original buck.
Tried to arrange more valve covers to sell, and I sold most –but not all- covers that I had.
Foundry made them for me once in a while, between bigger jobs, and I sold what I could get.

During the years, thread at HAMB  brought few people who wanted valve covers and I arranged them. This was possibly for reason that when you write “nailhead valve covers” to Google, first option that Google offers is my thread at HAMB.

There had passed five years since my post at HAMB. I had made ten-to-fifteen pairs of covers during that time, leaving three pairs for myself. One pair for my ’57, one pair for my ’31, and one pair as an extra.
So, not really a goldmine…

Last winter I was contacted again by Dennis O’Brien from O’Brien Truckers. He makes living with cast alloy parts, has made it since seventies. Many parts –but not all- that MOON sells are originally made by him.
He still was interested on my original pattern for valve covers.
His question got me thinking; Is it better to sell whole thing or keep original  for myself? I possibly could make money on that, or possibly not… seemly not much, it seemed. I needed valve covers for my both nailhead-equipped cars, and now I had them.
Being a private person –not a company- I don’t have resources to keep pairs and pairs and pairs of valve covers stored. If I’d go to swap-meet to sell them, I’d only have one product for one engine… that would possibly bring more cost than profit. Selling these from Finland (euros…) to United States (dollars…) is not easy task when exchange rate is about 1,5.
And last of all, I had (still have…) few other thoughts and ideas what I might do with cast aluminum, so this time original buck had to go, and it was time to move to another project in life.
Earlier I had thought that if I’ll sell casting pattern for someone, it’ll be Dennis… but not at just any price!
We started writing e-mails to each other, and quite quickly were able to make deal that we both were happy with.
One of the details in our deal is that my name is being cast inside each valve cover! Also I’m being mentioned at their web-shop as a designer of original pattern. I’m thinking this as a good benchmark for the future, what ever it brings!

And what future might bring for me? Well, nobody knows –ofcourse- but now, already, I’ve seen them for sale at Ebay for higher price that they are being sold at O'Brien Truckers.

Like my friend Larsen said;
“Maybe 30-50 years from now people will be bidding ridiculous amounts for these on
whatever Future-E-Gay they might have then.”

Didn’t originally think that it might go that way, but at that point… circle will be closed.