Well. Sorta. Greg, in his never-ending ability to see something neat, say, "Hey, I wonder how that's done," then set about learning, is making coins. Pirate coins, just for fun of course. But pretty darned cool nonetheless.
I sat in on a session yesterday, and can now report to you the process.
First you need a source of meltable metal. In his case, he started with pewter because (a) it melts and molds easily, and (b) we happened to have some available to melt down.
This creepy menagerie was found while cleaning out the garage. I knew I had, buried in there somewhere, a box of old trophies. These are old trophies - back when they still made the 'trophy' part out of real metal - pewter, apparently. I didn't want the old trophies anymore, and was going to throw them away, when we came up with the idea of melting the metal bits down to make the pirate coins Greg had wanted to try.
The guy with the laurel wreath on the left is, I think, a spelling bee trophy from when I was in about 5th or 6th grade. The fireman trophy was from a 3rd grade "Fire Prevention" poster contest. The horse on the far right, and the thing between it and the fireman (I think another horse) weren't even my trophies (that's what the ex gets for leaving crap in my parents' attic), so ... melt away.
The procedure (as Greg aka Lord Captain Robin McCauley does it) goes like this. The metal is melted with a simple propane blow torch. He carved the larger piece in which he is melting the metal out of graphite. This would have been the crucible, except he was having trouble getting the large piece to heat up using just the blow torch. So he made a channel in it, then made the smaller crucible (sitting under the drippy metal) to catch it as it ran down the channel.
This way with the blow torch he can both melt the metal and keep the smaller crucible very hot, to keep the metal liquid until he pours it into the mold. Otherwise it hardens way too fast. Why not just use the small crucible? Because the chunks o' trophy were too big.
The mold was carved into another piece of graphite. Once the liquid metal is poured in ...
... it needs tamped or pressed in a bit, to get it to spread all the way to the sides of the mold. This bit took some work, as he couldn't initially find anything that fit just right in the mold. He tried a capped beer bottle ...
I sat in on a session yesterday, and can now report to you the process.
First you need a source of meltable metal. In his case, he started with pewter because (a) it melts and molds easily, and (b) we happened to have some available to melt down.
This creepy menagerie was found while cleaning out the garage. I knew I had, buried in there somewhere, a box of old trophies. These are old trophies - back when they still made the 'trophy' part out of real metal - pewter, apparently. I didn't want the old trophies anymore, and was going to throw them away, when we came up with the idea of melting the metal bits down to make the pirate coins Greg had wanted to try.
The guy with the laurel wreath on the left is, I think, a spelling bee trophy from when I was in about 5th or 6th grade. The fireman trophy was from a 3rd grade "Fire Prevention" poster contest. The horse on the far right, and the thing between it and the fireman (I think another horse) weren't even my trophies (that's what the ex gets for leaving crap in my parents' attic), so ... melt away.
The procedure (as Greg aka Lord Captain Robin McCauley does it) goes like this. The metal is melted with a simple propane blow torch. He carved the larger piece in which he is melting the metal out of graphite. This would have been the crucible, except he was having trouble getting the large piece to heat up using just the blow torch. So he made a channel in it, then made the smaller crucible (sitting under the drippy metal) to catch it as it ran down the channel.
This way with the blow torch he can both melt the metal and keep the smaller crucible very hot, to keep the metal liquid until he pours it into the mold. Otherwise it hardens way too fast. Why not just use the small crucible? Because the chunks o' trophy were too big.
The mold was carved into another piece of graphite. Once the liquid metal is poured in ...
... it needs tamped or pressed in a bit, to get it to spread all the way to the sides of the mold. This bit took some work, as he couldn't initially find anything that fit just right in the mold. He tried a capped beer bottle ...
... a little too big. Then he tried a tipper (the 'beater' or stick used to play a bodhran - Irish drum) ...
... and this was working the best last time I checked.
And the finished product looks like this:
Pretty neat.
Tyler watched. I suspect he has ideas about making his own dog coins. Or else he just noticed activity around the brazier, and was just waiting for a taste.
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