Casting a Historic Bronze Cannon Barrel, Scaled Down Replica. FarmCraft101 

absolute mad lad

There are no failures as long as you learn and improve.

Its nice that he shows his mistakes. That is nice to see.

but it looks so cool the way it is!

Sean oreilly I KNOW RIGHT? It was like watching T2 backwards...

I second that!!!

oh. Looks like I said more or less the same as you. I like the idea of maybe marking a circle or something off and making that a place for his crest and proof mark.

That would look nice, a high polish on the majority of the cannon with a ring or possibly circle of casting.

Oh that's a slick idea, hadn't thought about that, but yeah, I thought it's a shame to lose all the cast mark because it would look no different from a commercial made thing, but polishing all but a few bands or a design would make it look very unique

That sounds like the best idea to me, perhaps an "as cast" ring left where the trunions are?

I've wondered about gravel. No chance of air pocket or steam explosions?

@@FarmCraft101 it helps against that. The gravel let gases escape from the mold. And since we are indoor, there is no water in the gravel to produce steam.

@@FarmCraft101 The biggest danger of steam explosions was the way you were doing it, with molten metal hitting bare concrete. All concrete, no matter how old, has entrapped moisture. You were very fortunate that the metal had cooled a lot as it went into the mould and then leaked out. If you had spilt enough metal straight from the crucible at a much higher temp, you could easily have gotten a lot bigger craters in your garage floor and maybe even some injury from flying chunks of concrete. Merely an inch or so thick layer of sand will prevent this. And it is better than gravel for that. Gravel gets trapped in the metal that spills on it and makes the metal harder to remelt. Larger pieces of gravel can explode too, from entrapped moisture. But spilled metal will cool neatly on top of the layer of sand just like in a mould. You can use your surplus moulding sand spread around near the furnace. It works even better than raw loose sand because it stays in place a bit better. Another thing to be very careful of - never bump your crucibles against anything even when empty and cold. Treat them very gently all the time so you don't have a small crack started. When up to pouring temp, they loose some of their strength anyway. This is why it is not a good idea to ever pour cast iron or steel with an ordinary crucible. At those even higher temps, they have lost maybe a third of their strength (and they don't last long either, maybe half a dozen pours at most). If you treat crucibles roughly or drop them accidentally, even when cold and empty, it is easy to get an unnoticed crack started that can cause a catastrophic failure, especially using them as full as you are. With a full crucible of molten bronze, there is considerable pressure on the bottom of the crucible, and the bottom is unsupported in the pouring shank as you lift it to pour. Imagine what would happen if the bottom dropped out that close to your legs and feet.

@@stewartmarshall4112 Johnny Tremain!

Tim Hooper LMAO omg nice

How is there only one comment

@@ashpotatounicorn792 no clue?

Really ? How does it work ?

I agree. Machine and polish. It'll look awesome!

Well, the stress will be the same, but there'll be fewer crack tips

Do both: Spray paint it bronze and then if you want to bring it back to rustic it's just a case of paint stripper. ;)

Polish! Polish! Make it the best you can with what you’ve got!

Sure they would

Jack Tradesman more like they wouldn’t even buy it but if it was already installed and they needed to then I guess they would. Lol

No self respecting ships captain would fire a cannon themselves, and no infantry crew would be allowed to have one. You're thinking of gunners mates and artillery crews.

The USA actually is on metric, Lbs, feet, and gallons are converted from Kgs, metres and litres.

@@DJW1959Aus yeah since the 1950ties IIRC. But due to pressure from the industry it never went further

@Schwarzie x Actually a lot longer ago than that, 1893. The decision to change the measurement standards from yard and pound to meter and kilogram is referred to as the Mendenhall order. It's been a while since I read the history of it, but I if I'm remembering correctly the Mendenhall order was just a formalization of what was already being done. The UK supplied pound and yard standards had deteriorated so badly that the US bureau of standards had no choice but to use the meter and kilogram standards that they had on hand.

@@schwarziex3563 we've been on the metric system since the 1820s when we purchased metric masters to set our masters, formally we were a signatary to the original metric convention and the master lb is set to the grand Kg, though that system just recently was replaced by fiddly watt balances

How about landing a man on the moon? there's something metrics haven't done.

bigstackD LOL.... I watch your stuff too... you need to take some of your 'treasure' and do something functional with it like this... do something historic..... how about an aluminum bronze real life size casting of your dog 'ingot'. Let the pup have some of your beer and make a mold of him while he's sleeping it off. Maybe a 3D laser scan of him, then a 3D print, then a lost PLA casting ??? IDK..... it would be epic.

The good thing is that since it is oversized, he could take off a solid quarter inch off the diameter and still be fine

In theory it should clean up close to the mold original dimension. I'd want to clean it up personally just so I could more easily inspect for bubbles or cracks or seams that might be hiding before putting 10k psi on this thing. Ultimately this is a high pressure vessel.

they're called stress risers

@@SuperAWaC thanks but my grasp of engineering is limited by my reptilian brain😀

I was also gonna suggest a deadman to rest the bar on while you pour

I guess it'll be fine if he machines it, but if he leaves it like it is he'll always be wondering how he could have done a better job.

A 100 gfn facing sand would work nicely.

in our foundry we used a bentonite + graphite mixture (dilluted in water) and let it to dry in an oven.. the surface finishes we were getting were pristine! and thanks to graphite it already looked like bronze without even doing any surface finishing (it had a shine)

Well said, I agree👍👍

But... He had the Elvis pants.

Mr fungus is spot on, vote for this. :)

I like this idea too. I thought it looked cool on his copper ingot!

whole 9 yards

@@2011metalmaniac That's good as well other than we would now have to say "the full 8.2296 meters" due to being metric. Somehow doesn't work as well.

@@robertdicken5439 lol yeah. We not that metric, roads are still in miles and beer is still in pints.

2011metalmaniac In fact that's true in the U.K.we are very mixed, roads marked in miles, pints both pints (beer) and litres (larger), but not always. Most use metric measurements so we are having to be conversant in both. Pain with tools as both imperial and metric gets used.

@@robertdicken5439 yup. but in ole Blighty if we are asked. How fast is your car, mph. if you say your weight its stone. height feet, your wood inches,

thought I might be the only one on the leave it looking cool side I like the as cast finish

A tensile test would be great, but I'm not sure that the top would reflect the rest of the cannon. The top would have cooled far faster than the balance of the barrel.

@@foy1der I'm talking about the sprue he poured it through not the extra riser. Either way it wont exactly reflect the strength of the actual cannon, but a test from the thickest lower part of the sprue should give some indication

SUCCESS! I’m kinda invested in this challenge and I’m kinda actually sorta proud of you for applying your knowledge and skill and casting this thing successfully!

hahaha ikr as soon as I heard him say it, I was like yep he got a like from me.