We still cast aluminum in the high school shop that I teach at. These metalwork programs are expensive to run and are the first to go when budgets shrink. Our city only has a couple of metal shops left, and then we are the only ones casting anything these days. The skull is still popular but the hurst shifter is no longer in vogue. As a demonstration last year to a bunch of juniors (freshmen and sophmores to my American cousins) I cast some emblems for my '56 Chevy pickup. I have noticed in the last four or five years that kids have less patience and desire to work at something as fussy as sand casting, so they have less success than they used to. BTW, that red sand that was mentioned in an earlier post is called Petro-Bond.
Yes, that type of sand is called Petrobond. We used it a lot when I was teaching casting in high school metal shop class. Those classes are long gone and fading fast.
Nice work man! This is one of the things on my "auto bucket list" of things to do..... O and your wife wants to know where all her nice kitchen spoons went!!!J.K.
Very cool! I grew up in the jewelry business and did lots of centrifugal casting, so I can make pretty detailed parts that are small by using the lost wax method. I've always wanted to learn how to sand cast. A local community college teaches it in an art sculpture class. I watched them do it a few times. The one safety tip I know is to never use damp sand..somebody did and molten metal is still stuck to the metal ceiling of the art studio building.
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