Backyard Aluminum Casting

Melting aluminum with a home-made furnace

For those that would be interested in this type of thing, it is possible (and inexpensive) to build a furnace out of easily obtainable supplies that is capable of melting lead, zink, aluminum, magnesium, tin, salt, and just about anything else that melts below 2000 degrees farenheit.

The furnace

The furnace is modeled after the furnaces described in the Dave Gingery books "Lil Bertha Electric Furnace", "Building a Gas-Fired Crucible Furnace", and mainly "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap #1 - The Charcoal Foundry".

These books can be purchased from Lindsay Publications Inc.
PO Box 538, Bradley IL 60915 (815) 935-5353
(Ask for their metal working books catalog)

A few links to other home-made furnaces

Here is another casting site.
Building an inexpensive small scale furnace for melting "nonferrous" metals, by Hank Kaminsky
A metal melting furnace, by Klaas van Ditzhuyzen
Backyard foundry info, by Kurt J Schaefer

(There is plenty more to say about this, and one of these days I hope to have enough time to say it...)

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