Afternoon everyone …..
It’s been so freaking hot and humid here in the northeast for over a week straight now. We’ve had real feel temperatures of over 100 degrees three straight days now, and today will be four.
Aside from working tons of hours combating this heat, not having much left in the tank to do anything afterwards has been rough.
Yesterday was my chance to try and get some poring done….
I had the afternoon free yesterday as I had started early and laid down the Hardie backer on the floor of a current job. The mortar used underneath the Hardie backer needs to set for 24-48 hours before I can tile.
So…..
I set up my make shift pouring station, grabbed the furnace, set the program and let the furnace heat up. The furnace takes a little over 20 minutes to get to temperature.
While that was heating up. I grabbed the rest of my supplies needed. Welding gloves, thongs, crucibles, molds, vise, stainless steel bowl to quench, hand sledgehammer and of course silver.
A while back I was sent twenty rounds to melt into bars for the PIMP token vault. So turning them into vault bars was the first thing on my list.
In order to fit them in the crucible they first need to be bent. So they went into the vise, and the handheld sledgehammer went to work.
Now we are ready….
I had ever intention of pouring some other things, which I’m not going to let out of the bag yet. But they will be coming soon I promise.
There was no threat of rain in the forecast as I checked several times.
Yet….
Just after I had poured a ten ounce and five ounce PIMP vault bar, and had just put a crucible in the furnace with my last four ounces of silver rounds. It decided to start drizzling.
Needless to say I had to make a hard dash to get everything back inside. Which is an issue when the furnace was at a temperature of 2100 degrees. The only place that I can pour currently is outside. My shop is for woodworking which means sawdust. A furnace with Liquid Metal does not belong inside a wood shop.
After picking what I hoped was a safe spot to leave the furnace, I had to set the furnace to the cooldown program. Yeah, you can’t just shut it off, it harms the coils and can ruin the furnace. The cool down takes about thirty minutes.
So after getting everything inside and dry. I didn’t want to leave the furnace unattended until it was off. So I put all the supplies away, then took a look at the two bars that I did manage to pour.
Here they are….
These are the PIMP vault bars. There are three ten ounce bars and the one with all the cool bubbles is a five ounce bar. I think the bubbles formed because the mold wasn’t hot enough yet, looks cool though.
So there are now 35 ounces of vault silver for the PIMP token holdings.
Now I just need to order more silver to pour, I don’t buy one ounce rounds or bars to stack, so all the one ounce stuff that I have is either vintage or part of a series. Not melting those…. Not a chance.
So I’ll be placing and order for some silver shortly.
