Making Model Steam Engine Castings in the Home Workshop 

No worries 👍 some of us like the sounds of birds.

I enjoyed the sound of the birds. It was calming as was your narration.

The birds in the background are wonderful. Great video, informative and peaceful!

👍 Great work on the casting, it came out quite nicely. I will admit to rather liking the songbirds in the background as well. Excellent job all around sir, thank you.

Excellent video. My father was a non ferrous moulder and I frequently visited the foundry. You may find benefit from obtaining a pair of old fashioned hand bellows to blow loose sand and excess talc off of the mould surfaces. Had you considered increasing the diameter of the risers but reducing their length as the metal in them will stay molten for longer ensuring complete feed of the mould. The other thing that you didn’t mention was, when making the pattern you need to allow for shrinkage, from memory dad used to say it was ¼” in a foot or 2.08%.

For somone who has only been casting for a short while thats a bloody good result congrats, looking forward to more !!

What a great video. Very informative. I did like the part about the sand core. I need to get back to melting. Hopefully this time without blowing myself up in the process.

Love the small unobtanium sign on the shelf 🙂

Very interesting project. Excellent video recording and very pleasant narration.

Very nicely produced video.

I've seen lots of videos from Myford Boy, Prezzo and others and this is THE simplest and least faffy setup I've seen. Well explained and no voodoo involved. Great stuff 👍👍

Be sure to pre-heat the second lot of scrap before adding it to the crucible! Any moisture on the surface can flash to steam and give unprotected parts a painful silvery coating of aluminium.

Extremely clean castings, and well-shot and well-explained process, with some intermediate explanations that I hadn't heard in detail before. Your voice and pacing are very calm and deliberate: easy to follow.

very detailed overview of all needed process steps, thanks a lot, very impressive

They are nice clean castings Ade. I have used epoxy sand cores in brass castings and they work fine. Regards, Preso.

Love the birds in the back ground. They are a real feel of spring and summer with their feathers changing at this time of year.

Nice clean castings, molten alloy will dissolve your steel tart tins, I coat mine with a refractory wash, Petrobond's expensive, I use a facing with a layer of petrobond & back up with Mansfield red [greensand] & make my cores from windblown sea sand, linseed oil dextrin & water & bake them in the rayburn [when the missus is out!!] when I taught students to cast I told them an easy way to remember the flask parts is "life's a DRAG when you're on the bottom but you can COPE when you're on the top" hehe. Graham.

Excellent video in every way, many thanks.

I had an idea when I saw the crucible 26:19 Maybe you can coat the graphite crucibles with air dry, or even oven set ,ceramic coatings, Cera coat it's used on pistons, exhaust, and lots more, if it made a crucible basically indestructible it may be worth it, it had been said to hold an aluminum piston together after it had gotten so hot it melted! If it protects the crucible allowing it to last 10x 20x or much more longer, I don't think the crucibles are that expensive, but a dollar saved and all, another thing, I believe going to a salvage yard, buying scrap allow rims, cutting them up, 'making aluminum inguits for later pours, it pours very well, and can be nearly free, if you don't mind the work! It is an alloy, designed to be cast, and look perfect!

An excellent opportunity to rewatch the video and be even more inspired than previously. 👏👏👍😀

you are an inspiration...i see molten metal in my future.

From an old bloke in his shed nice one,M😀

Lovely job Ade. 🙂 I hope the wife appreciated her roasting tray back unharmed and the Sunday spuds didn't taste too oily or gritty. ;-)

I’m only 1 minute in and already loving it!

Great stuff, very interesting. Many, many uses for that. 😁

I have to say, that was a very good tutorial as how to cast items... Thumbs Up!

You could always turn down the outside of the flywheels to press fit into a cut section of steel pipe for added weight

Thank You for sharing. Well done and interesting presentation. 🙂

Great video Ade. Looking forward to seeing your creations come to life! Thank you for sharing. Joe

Nice job! I believe the drag is so named that for large casting pattern boxes which were too heavy to lift, they were pulled or dragged around the foundry floor with hooks or ropes. In fact it was a common way to move metal boxes around when I was an engineering apprentice. A 2 foot or so long metal rod with ends bent at right angles, where one end was hooked into the handle of the metal box and the other end held in the hand and the box of components dragged along the factory floor. I've never worked in a foundry although I have visited them as part of my work. But I did metalwork at school and we cast a few things like aluminium file and pad saw handles.

Ade i gotta say: i love your Voice. its so calm and fits perfect to your Nice edited Videos. The Video is very informative ! thanks

An excellent video .. thanks for taking the time and trouble to produce it. I'm 75 and learned a great deal.

Nice clean casting, Thanks for the teaching.

Although I have no intrest in model trains, your documentation and clearly shown process for making the mold, sand, risers and everything else about the process of making an aluminum casting is amazing. If anyone i know needs a walkthrough of how to do it, i will show them this video.

Wow, great video. Very well put together and I learned something! Thanks for your time to do this.

Very well explained Ade! A big thumbs up from the Colonies!

Very comprehensive.... excellent!

Have just watched this vid, like it and am now a subscriber. Excellent vid, no bullshit and love the comments when taking out the patterns - that is exactly how I would feel doing it. Very well presented with excellent content and information. Don’t think that I will be forging but you have made it look achievable. Thanks Stewart .

LIKE YOU ATTITUDE ON THIS .. COMING FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW. MADE ME THINK AGAIN.. AN LOOK TWICE.. HOPE YOU KEEP IT UP .. TONE UK

You beautiful man ! Thank you for making this magnificant tutorial.

Using a small paint brush and a little water to swab the edges of the pattern pieces will aid in the removal of the pattern pieces from the mould halves. You may need to de-gas the molten aluminium to avoid possible gas holes in the castings. De-gassing tablets should be available from a local foundry supplies merchant or a local foundry.

Late comment, flawless casting one of the cleanest.

Nice work,congratulations.

Informative and very well done! Thnx!

Excellent vid and demonstration of moulding/casting to offset the high price of the casting kits available. I got here on a push from "Mr. Factotum" so good luck with the subs, here's hoping you got "viral" cheers!

great informative video on the practice for home use.

Loved the vid, can't wait to see the engine 🙂

Just stumbled on this video. Great work and really informative, cheers from the Far East

Excellent work!

15:21 😂 I love that we can hear you whisper "that was the scary bit" like your soufle might deflate if you're too loud. Lovely video.

Hi , I don’t mind the birds there quite nice actually like the Suffolk punch at the beginning it shows you’re truly in a lovely British garden ( or was it a qualcast? ) Great video enjoyed the content and learned a little more about casting very nice job on that btw , and your very fast with a hack saw too 👍🏻

I like the gate pattern idea, very neat and far better that scooping the gates out afterwards! Phil

Thanks for this. I've been eyeing that furnace as a way into metal casting.

Wow I can't get over well your channel is doing

This seems interesting, may have to try this with a 3d printed pattern instead of wood...

The background sound is wonderful. Beats some overplayed, corny music soundtrack any day.

Good video. I use the CO2 process for core making. Good to see you at Claymills today

I don't know how much talc you use but I used quite a lot mixed with fibre glass resin as a cheap car type filler to make a fibre glass pattern for making fibre glass moulds to make some parts I needed for a large model. I bought 25kilo from a fibre glass supplier based in Redruth, Cornwall, a good source for cheap paint brushes and latex and rubber gloves, very useful for clean hands playing with graphite. They also do a large range of mixing pots. They also do 5kg of talc for £12.17.

Those aluminium muffins look very tasty

My ford boy has been doing this for years. But he never speaks lol.

Excellent video!

Very interesting. I have done some casting myself but it's always nice to see others work. Nice

Great video Sir !! Thank you.

Great video 😀👍… Thanks ade

Mum’s going to be Angry with you using her Muffin and Cake pans! Nice job, I love watching melting video’s. I’m a hobby machinist also. 👍

Excellent video , Thank you sir.

Fine work, Sir.

Brilliant work as always, Ade!

So much better! At least the bird noises are in the background this time!

Briliant video Ade thanks very much,

excellent video, glad I came across it, now subscribed thank you

Exellent video,im glad i came across it. Id reccomend Doubleboost's channel,he also has some fantastic casting tips and tricks. You have certainly earned a new subscriber.

Very nice video. I’ll definitely will have to look into it in the future

This is really cool, i want to do the same thing on a smaller scale to make silver then gold watch cases. Incidentally i used to work for Tecumseh engines we had light medium and heavy flywheel options. Light were aluminium, medium were zamac and heavy were cast iron. If you want to increase the mass of your flywheel, more than casting from zamac will achieve, pressing a steel band onto the rim might be an option. Finally, an inboard flywheel could be a nightmare if you need to run belts off of it.

You could use a small coarse fabric bag to powder your surfaces also. Just by hitting the surfaces you'll get powder in them.

Nice video, thanks! Another option for the flywheel may be to get some thick walled steel pipe and use it to make the rim of the wheel as a separate part. The rim is what counts most for storing momentum so if you can get the weight there you will have a great flywheel

Very nice job. Love it. How about shrinking a steel rim or tire onto the aluminium flywheel for extra rotating mass?

Try baby powder on the inside of the conduit when making the sand core.

Thanks for the interesting video

Well done Mr Swash

Nice work!

What I could find as to the etymology of cope and drag is as follows: The word cope evolved from the latin word for a woman's head covering. The word drag came from an ancient norse word meaning load, something heavy that would be dragged.

Great video and very informative. I think you've got cope and drag terms the wrong way around. The drag is at the bottom and the cope has the risers.

My favorite youtube channel 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Great video Ade 👍

Excellent video Ade. I've just started using Zamak also. The engine I'm now building called for Bronze flywheels. I knew Bronze would be expensive so looked at Brass. I'm an ex-pat now living in New Zealand and metals not cheap here. Brass was going to cost me approx. £130.00....Ouch! Zamac is a lot cheaper. Won't look the same but couldn't justify the price. Loved the birds singing away.. Regards Kevin

Rather than using a zinc alloy, could you not get some steel pipe and put steel crowns on the flywheels to give them a bit more mass?

NEW EDIT UPLOADED - Sorry about the loud Blackbirds, problem is now fixed - unfortunately youtube does not allow me to replace video, so have lost the likes and comments

Wonderful tutorial Video, i love the fact that i am not the only one who used kitchen tools from my wife 😂😂😂😂😂

I seem to recall that molasses was used instead of epoxy to make cores in the old days

Nice job

looks like your part came out very well. I use flour, a little molasses and water as a binder for core sand. Have to bake it in the toaster over at 350 F for about 4 hours. Less expensive than expox.

Thanks for the video! Please be careful about breathing in any baby powder. The talc powder especially should be avoided. Even the cornstarch based powder could cause respiratory issues.

Something that interests me also. Maybe one day.

Very nice castings

Eu sou do Brasil. Gostei sou doido para construir um motor a vapor. Felicidades.

Ade, thank you for reducing the bird noise to listenable levels - not to be funny, but us hearing-impaired old duffers have a real problem with extraneous noise (we avoid restaurants on that basis) - and thanks also for a most interesting and pleasantly voiced video on the subject (I believe the term is "ASMR", whatever that means. Cheers!

Think of it this way: the DRAG drags on the table, the COPE just has to cope with it! Lol

Remarkable.

I've seen some documentation that shows the Victorian and Edwardians mixing graphite into the sands to fill microscopic gaps making for exceedingly fine castings, some of which I've seen in person in buildings as door furniture!