Aluminum Casting Pour Up on the Roof

While we were busy working away on our relatively simple projects the other night, the guys next door were getting into much more serious business!  The door opened and one guy announced, "Five minutes to the aluminum pour..."  Well, that was our cue to grab our phones and cameras and take the outdoor walkway over to the rooftop patio behind the other metal studio.  Yep, they do real stuff over there like work on damascus, create multi-layer ingots called mokume gane and do some blacksmithing as well.  Think of it this way...  My projects are like Rhode Island and the stuff they do, well it's bigger than Texas!

They have their moulds set in sand with what looked like fireproof barriers in between each section.  The aluminum was put in a crucible and it was heated with a gas flame to a very high temp of about 1220 fahrenheit.  Yes, that's pretty hot...

Anyhow, the molten metal is in a crucible and it is carefully moved to a different type of metal holder and then it is poured into the various moulds.  The first pour didn't work out very well because they were using recycled aluminum from probably cans.  The second pour was done with a better quality of metal and it flowed very well.  Enjoy the photos and for many, it's not something you see every day or every night!