View Project colinpeck melt

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Virtually free casting! Aluminium to Cast Iron never pay fuel bills again!

A mini Cupola, it worked, but had it's limitations

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This was the start to my waste oil burning, although it burnt almost anything!
It's still going strong and now has a new home, I will always have fond memories of this "beasty" as it got me going on the waste oil kick which allows me to do my casting for FREE!!!

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It doesn't even need to fit in the furnace to melt!!
Simply place on top to melt and ladle out or tap from the spout !!

This simple to build but versatile waste oil furnace will run all day for the price of the electricity for the fan. It will melt a no.8 crucible (aprox 24 lbs.) of cast iron with ease, although I haven't tried, I feel that a larger crucible would be possible!
A 5 litre steel pot of aluminium is no problem, if it fits in the furnace, it will melt!
Need to melt more? Build it bigger then!
Most metals (unfortunatly not cast iron) can be melted directly in the furnace (with no crucible) and tapped from the 10"dia.x 2"deep well into a homemade ladle from the spout. This allows large scrap like wheel rims and big engine parts to be placed on top of the open,pre-heated furnace and the molten metal to run into the well for tapping.
Reducing large quantities of unsightly scrap into easy to store ingots is fast and free!

The Magical Fuel

Old engine oil, time for your cars oil change? FREE furnace fuel! but your car doesn't need an oil change every 20 miles! Ask your local garage, waste oil's no good to them!
Cod and chips and 20 litres of your best used cooking oil please. Every take away, restaurant, pub with grub, has used cooking oil THEY DON'T WANT IT!! and we do! why don't we help them out by taking it away for them!
I'm sure you won't have to go too far to find your fuel, and it costs nothing, so keep a good stock on hand so you never run out!

Some pictures of a few of my earlier furnaces in action

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THE BOOK IS HERE!

Cast iron melted for FREE

Full details on how to build and use this furnace, no complicated machining AT ALL! Only the basic tools a hobby metal worker would have are needed.
Although the book describes the size of furnace shown in the pictures, the concept is so simple, building one to any size you need shouldn't present any difficulties.
If you've already built a propane furnace you're pleased with, you'll probably find you can easily modify it to accept my oil burning system (full performance can only be guaranteed with my furnace design). All you need to know is in the book, and you don't need to be a Rocket Scientist to understand it!

HOW MUCH ARE YOU SPENDING ON FUEL?

Can you afford NOT to build one?
Are you able to cast iron now?
Do you wait to use your furnace until you have enough castings to pour to justify the cost of lighting it?
The first full day you have this furnace in operation,you will save more than the cost of this book. You can now afford to experiment as much as you like.
Use a 12 volt car fan as the blower, connect it to your car and you now don't even have to pay for the electricity, use it wherever you want! Just don't set your car on fire!
Light this furnace to pour one casting or as many as you need. Get on with it when you want to, not when you can afford to!

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Many home casters use steel pots as crucibles for aluminium or brass/bronze. This can create several problems, once steel reaches a certain temperature it starts to flake, this reduces the thickness of the steel and these flakes can end up in the casting!
Steel pots are usually quite thin, the heat loss from them is very rapid once they leave the furnace.
Cast iron hardly flakes at all, and homemade cast iron crucibles can be thick enough to retain the heat of the contents for far longer, and they're easier to make than welding a bottom in a piece of steel pipe! Using waste oil for the fuel to cast them HOW CHEAP CAN YOU GET! The book tells you how.

cast iron melted with coke

casting aluminium

direct melting copper

copper in a crucible

an open mould

filled with copper

A copper sundial

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Cast iron crucibles

£14-95

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(aprox, US$28-00, Euro22, Canada$30-50, Australia$37-00)

+ postage and packing

click here for backyard metal casting

Sites worth looking at, more to come

(U.K. £2-00, Europe £3-50, international £5-50)

Email me from this link

Email me with your name and FULL POSTAL ADDRESS, I will email you an invoice which can be paid with pay pal or a bank/credit card (Pounds Sterling please). My address is on the invoice should you prefer to pay with a money order (in Sterling), or cash in your local currency, I can take no responsibility for it's safe arrival to me(please let me know in your email)., U.K.residents can pay by cheque.

TO ORDER

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Don't be shy! any questions either before or after buying the book just ask!

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For a video clip of the furnace in action melting cast iron burning waste engine oil

Colin Peck

(SEE UPDATE FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE)

Firstly, I realise that this site talks mainly about casting iron, this is because every other home foundry site covers aluminium and brass so I didn't see the need to add anything else despite the fact that most of my casting is done in aluminium.
At the top of this page, and in my book, I suggest that a larger crucible of cast iron than an A8 could be melted in this furnace without building it bigger, but how much larger?
I don't actually need to pour any more cast iron than the A8, however........ curiosity finally got the better of me!
This gave me two choices, to buy crucibles of ever increasing sizes until I reached the maximum, or, start out at the top end and hope I didn't waste my money!
Physically I decided that an A20 was the largest that was workable in this furnace. A clay/graphite Salamander A20 crucible has a working capacity of 30 kg.(66 lbs.) of brass, around 60-ish lbs. of cast iron (I believe different makes can have different capacities) so I took the plunge and bought one!!

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UPDATE 18/8/06

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The furnace loaded with the A20

Heavy enough even for a two man lift

Pouring gently

Pouring not so gently!

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The pouring pictures have been extracted from a video clip, so the quality isn't great, however they show the general idea.
Please don't email me about the lack of saftey wear! DON'T DO AS I DO, DO WHAT YOU THINK IS SAFE, your own safety is your concern!

I would like to point out that I didn't spend a penny on fuel for this session. From start to finish this was done entirely on FREE fuel, waste engine oil is my favorite.
Since the fuel was free, the cast iron was free and my friend John and myself come pretty cheap as well, I could afford to carry out this experiment and simply waste the metal to give this a go.

I fired up the furnace and placed the charged crucible on the plinth, two hours later, we were pouring it. This includes skimming the slag and topping up the crucible three times during the melt to get a full pot.
This was pushing the furnace to its limit for cast iron, there was only just enough room to get the lifting tongs in position to get the crucible out, a larger crucible would require the furnace to be built bigger.
I am confident that any time I need this much cast iron, I can go out and pour it, depending on the quality of the fuel and the weather conditions, the melting times will vary. Perhaps in the dead of winter, it might be advisable to have a little diesel on hand to mix with the engine oil in case it needs a little boost, I won't know until next winter if it's neccessary, I certainly didn't need it last winter for the A8.

This really is a serious amount of very hot metal for an amateur to handle, make sure you are fully experienced with smaller amounts of cast iron before you think of going to this amount. The total lift weight including the crucible and tongs as shown in these pictures is in the region of 80 lbs. one slip could be very serious!
Also you must be fully familiar with operating the furnace, you will need to have it running as hard as it can.

For anyone building this furnace

I learnt something about my design which only became apparent during this melt due to the size of the mass inside the furnace.
I say in the book that once the furnace is lit, you can gradually increase the fuel/air mix as it heats up. On this occasion,I simply didn't allow enough time between these increases for this mass to heat sufficiently, this allowed some un-vaporised oil to leak from the bottom of the furnace.
Follow the instructions in the book on page 52 but keep the exhaust flame yellow with just a little bit of orange in it, just as it is in the picture to the right of this text entitled "The furnace loaded with the A20". No orange and you will be running it a too lean, very orange and it's too rich and you could get an oil leak. When you notice the exhaust flame get smaller/thinner, it is now ready for more fuel.
With previous melts using a smaller crucible this wasn't so apparent.
The blower I've used here is the one recomended in the book,I now prefer to use this one instead of the home cast one shown in the other pictures, you should recognise it! I eventually had this giving all it had with the fuel flow to match, and as you can see it did the job well!

Use this information in conjunction with the information given on page 52, I will be altering the wording in the book to make this clearer now I realise its significance.

Also a slightly larger dia. plinth is a good idea for a crucible of this size, the furnace bottom softened up during the melt allowing the plinth and the crucible to tip, it couldn't go far, but we had to fiddle around a little to get the tongs over it to lift it out.

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This video is kindly hosted by Chris at builder of stuff, to look at his site

Metal casting with waste oil

This site gets upset if too many people have a look at it at the same time (it's a little shy!), and refuses to load. So if you have difficulty having a look, give it another go a little later on.

Please note

Aluminium to cast iron

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My first furnace, made for free! The clay for the lining I dug from my garden, mixed with sand left over from a building job
The blower is a tumble dryer motor and fan with a biscuit tin as the fan housing.
It burnt charcoal or coal, and also I used it with a five pint paraffin blow torch.
I also tried out my first waste oil burner on it, the rest as they say, is history!

So much for that,NEXT!

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www.artfulbodgermetalcasting.com

My new site is now up and running!Click here for a look

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