Back in high school in a shop class we got try our hand at sand casting. We had two choices of objects. Brass knuckles or a Hurst shift knob of the gray wide style with HURST In the center. Times have changed. Anyone do that sort of thing way back when?
We also were able to try our hand at sand casting in our HS metal shop. Our group of car guys decided to cast a car club plaque. My design won, so we cast five . I received the first one which I still have.
Not mine but I do have my FIL’s bench vise project that he made at Tilden Technical High School on Chicago’s south side in 1943. The students did the castings and machining including the Acme screw and serrations on the jaws. Me? I attended a Catholic HS where they never considered anything like the manual arts.
We did aluminum and brass sand castings in my high school shop class. Hurst T handles were made there. 3rd year students could do a couple pours a week. 1977 graduating class LAHS
Yep. BigFoot throttle pedals were a popular choice. Aitkin Highschool (MN), class of 2000, so not ALL that long ago.... Got to do it again a few years later as part of a Manufacturing Technology course during my Mechanical Engineering degree at the University of North Dakota. Senior ME project was a robotic ladeling arm for a local sand cast foundry to complete the circle.
We didn't have anything that cool at my high school. Now that I moved up to Wisconsin I have a neighbor who has a mini machine shop in his side yard and he went to auctions and found the furnaces and all the equiptment and hardware from three different high schools that no longer teach casting because of safety and filled one of his barns. Hopefully one day I'll be trying to do some casting. He's even talking about steel. I'm missing the RH mirror image of this bracket but i found someone to borrow one for a pattern.. Should be interesting.
How cool is that. I've seen some pretty good high school projects, but nothing like casting then machining a vice. Skills we now seem to be losing . Cheers, Harv
We cast the intake manifold for my Flathead powered Tank. My friend Ray Federovizc did the incredible tooling. I'll try to post a picture later. Wayno
We never did casting, but at least we had an electronics course (which led me to my 50 year career). I worked at a university where some dimwit thought that casting was "too dangerous" for the students, so they cancelled the subject (part of mechanical engineering), and I was told to get rid of all the equipment, which I did- to my workshop. I enrolled at a night course at a local tech college and ended up casting some 35/36 windscreen posts as my project. Just about everyone in the class had an old car or bike that they were making something for.
I recall making an ashtray for mom, shaped like the US. We had to hand file the recesses for the cigarette to rest on. We used junk Corvair pistons, rings and all. Those were fished out before the pour. We also sprinkled something on top of the melt to bring up impurities, we skimmed that off. But we got to know what a "drag" and "cope" was, mixing the green sand, getting the moisture just right. My brother made a horse head in his class, polished it up. I have to ask if he still has it.
In my Freshman year, Shop Orientation class, my teacher/ then friend, Nick Komarchuk (RIP), had us sand casting all sorts of stuff. I made a NO CLUB LONE WOLF and ROAD ANGLES Chicago (DADs club) plaque and other weird stuff Nick had laying around. He also taught us the art of melting plexiglass together with lacquer thinner/ paint stripper to make those multi colored dash knobs. Also took woods, foundry /welding- metals, small engine, print shop, auto shop & autos advanced. All the shop classes except mechanical drawing and electrical. Academics came in second for me!! Those were the days!! Mitch
I remember casting a block of aluminum to machine into a meat tenderizer with a waffle surface. I didn't get involved with casting again until the early '90's and then became deeply involved with miniatures. This is a 1/3 scale dual plane manifold for the engine similar to what is in my avatar. and then recently 1/4 and 1/2 scale Moon pedals.
A kid down the street went to public school and in shop class sandcast a skull shift knob. I went to private school and did not have shop class, I was so jealous.
The school I attended didn't have a foundry class but the crafts teacher that I bought my 51 Merc from (still called Darlington's old Merc by some of my classmates) taught guys in his class how to make laminated knobs. On the other hand when I was teaching and going to summer school at Central Washington University and got to see the foundry shop and what they had for classes and the wood shop and what they had for classes if I had won the lotto I would have become a professional student there.
We did some aluminum in shop class. Parts for a small wood stove for ice fishing. No hot rod parts that I remember. But that class started my journey as a machinist of 41 years. One thing we had was a liquid that you brushed on the castings and it blackened it. Kinda like a anodized finish. Anyone happen to know what that could have been?
When I went to Rockland District High School (Class of 1984), we had a great Industrial Arts program with a wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, and drafting department. We had some great people in metal shop! Six lathes, a welding/foundry area, surface grinder, oxy-acetylene rigs, and a fantastic shop teacher. One guy decided to do some lost foam casting to make a set of arrow heads, but he stunk up the shop and that end of the school because it was too cold out to open the garage door. The principal was NOT amused! Last summer I attended our 40th class reunion, and my shop teacher Mr. Babb came! Hadn't seen him since high school; he was very happy when I told him I turned high schol metal shop into a career!
Never heard of sand/casting classes in high school. That is so cool. Had machine shop and wood working back in public school. Hard to imagine 13-14 yr old kids today being allowed to operate that kind of machinery today. lol!
I was also one of the lucky ones that got exposed to casting metal in High School, this was back in the mid '70's. We cast in brass and aluminum, the big project was to make eagles for the top of flag poles that were used at the state capitol for the bicentennial. Remember 1976 when everything was about the bicentennial? We also got to use South Bend metal lathes, I now own one and think about using the one in school often. Years later when my son went to the same High School I asked at a "back to school" night when or if the students will get to use the metal lathes and was told never as it's too dangerous.
Hello, In our old high school, we had a myriad of elective classed available to all students. Besides the counselors telling everyone about the classes in order to get into colleges anywhere, the elective classes were a fun part of the teenage high school time period. But, I could look back now and see a large group of students that stayed away from those “elective” classes, due to the nature of the reputation versus the college prep classes. The odd thing was during those old days, colleges were easier to get accepted than they are today. So, what was the big worry at the time? 1959-63? Those of us that were the staples of those elective classes wished they were all fun to be in and finish projects along the way. The classes included jewelry making, wood shop, metal shop and of course the auto shop class, that was always full of our hot rod/drag race friends. Most of us still went to college, but at the time, it was not the one and only thing on our minds. Afterall, we were teenagers with a whole world ahead of us. Although the world was pressing down on all of us during this time. So, the popular classes were the metal shop and auto shop for the majority of our friends. We made projects after projects and even added to our hot rod sedans and repaired some family cars, too. As a young teen the metal shop had a wonderful set of machines we had never seen before, but they were off limits until we got our basic projects finished. A sand casting of a lincoln side view head was one funny requirement. It was about 4 x 6 and easily fit in one hand. Why a Lincoln Head Project? The project gave us plenty to do after we got a clean surface pop out silhouette of Abe Lincoln. If the surface of the face and neck had holes, then it was a meltdown and a re-do project. Once a good pop out showed up when it cooled, then on to the sanding and buffing stage. Jnaki It was a simple project and immediately, those of the students who finished the lincoln head pour and polish went to the next project, a round aluminum ball. It was harder to do in the sand as some of the edges fell in, when we were ready to take out the sample ball. But as we packed the sand better and tried again, the sample came out and we were ready to pour. The odd thing was, some of the students popped out the round sample and closed the lid. Somehow, something fell and as we poured the molten liquid, it created a weird shape when cooled and finished. We had to take careful details to keep the round ball scratch free when we were drilling a hole for the threads necessary for our long floor shifter. One scratch and the whole process starts again. YRMV It was a fun process and we learned to use stuff we normally don’t use as our projects all changed after the standard class list projects for a grade. Ours were geared to hot rods and custom stuff. Some spun bowls as it was easy to buff up and give as gifts. I never tried the spun metal sheet project until an elective class in college.
I took 4 years of metal shop in high school and we had a furnace for casting handles for toolboxes every first year student was required to build. Myself and a few other guys decided to do a side project. One guy brought in a small key chain fob of a naked lady and we sand cast a copy and poured it. Once we had enough copies we were able to cast about 8 at a time off the copies. We began selling them to other guys for their key chains at a buck each. It was going great until some idiot was showing his in a classroom and the teacher saw it. He ratted us out, and the shop teacher came to me as the teacher's assistant and wanted to know what I knew about it. I gave him most of the money we'd made off it and that went into a shop fund for guys who didn't have money for shop materials. He told me it was very creative, and next time run the idea past him first, and profits would still go to help other students pay for materials. Nobody wanted to help after that if it didn't go in their own pocket.
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