And you can watch it happen in this literally awesome video from the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory. I wonder how much that lens cost? I’ve got a shed out back, wouldn’t be too hard to cut a hole in the roof… [via Boing Boing]
Craig Bush saw our recent post about Ryan Palser’s Fallout 3 replica weapons and thought we might be interested in this photoset of his home-poured aluminum Call of Duty ray gun replica. He was right. As much as the prop itself, I really dig his video of the pour, embedded above. If you’re interested in sandcasting aluminum at home, there’s a lot to learn, in the 120-odd seconds of this video, about how to do it right.
If you follow CRAFT, as well, you may have seen Rachel’s post back in January about Oregon jeweler Shannon Conrad’s interlocking Lego rings. Shown above is the result of Shannon’s very first experiment with casting from Lego elements, a one-off solid silver Imperial Stormtrooper minifig she made for her 11-year-old son. It weighs 1.5 oz (44g). I know Lego fanboys who happily would trade their own teeth for one of those.
This is a video, from YouTuber OliKills, showing two guys using a thermal lance (Wikipedia), also called a “thermic lance” or “burning bar,” to cut through a lump of concrete. It really gets going about 20 seconds in, and by the end of the video a white-hot stream of molten concrete “lava” is clearly visible running across the pavement.
Jake von Slatt gives us a video tour of his finished propane and waste oil foundry furnace. I love the lamp post and lights. SO von Slatty! Final test of Jake von Slatt’s Waste Oil Foundry Furnace
One downside to being a big fan of a particular maker is how long it can seem between new projects on his/her site, entries of a multi-part projects journal, what they had for breakfast, anything. Certain builders, I go to their sites (or look at their newsfeeds) obsessively, and it can be maddening waiting for […]
Tim Saylor recently wrote in to me about the Gingery-style charcoal foundry he built for Chicago’s hackerspace Pumping Station: One. There’s a write-up here and a good Flickr set showing construction and use of the furnace to melt aluminum here, including some really pretty shots of the fire and sparks at night. [Thanks, Tim!]
