Casting ala Gingery -- Belt cover for the Porter Cable shaper

[Bill Pace]

When I introduced my "new" Porter Cable shaper a couple weeks ago, I told that it was missing the upper belt cover that was originally a cast piece. Having built about everything that Dave Gingery dreamed up for his series on building a workshop out of scrap aluminum, I felt like this cover would be a good refresher course. With help from a couple guys over on the yahoo shaper group I found a sketch with the diminsions of the cover and a copy of an original parts manual with a good pic of it, so it looked like not too big a deal--HAH!!

Well it was quite a learning experience -- that it is a bitch of a pattern to try and get out of sand, -- that I had to make a second pattern to correct the many errors I kept finding on the first one, -- that my sand from back in the Gingery days was apparently 'wore out' and to replace it.

Once I got the pattern re-made and the new 'dirt' came in yesterday, I promptly set about to make the 9th attempt to pull the pattern and make a pour!!

The new 'dirt' was amazing! what a difference -- and with the new pattern, I succeeded on the first try, had it completed in about 2 hrs. Got it painted and put in its new home today.

Just coming out of the sand, -- my eyes popped out when I saw this much...it just might come out allright!!


Completely out of the sand and YESSIR shes lookin good!!


Laying side by side, pattern and 'clone' ready to be painted


And here she is residing in its new home --- sure did improve the looks of the little guy...

[wierdscience]

Very nice,isn't it funny how everything that looks simple never is?

[tiptop]

Bill, nice job on the part. It has been years since I have done any casting either, but it seems to me that as you use you sand it gets burned and can be freshened up. I don't recall exactly what you add to it to do this but as I say it seems like it was salvageable situation. Your cover looks great though. Where did you end up getting your green sand? Jay

[sidegrinder]

Great job--sweet machine!

[Mark Hockett]

Bill,
If your old sand was an oil based green sand you can add hydraulic oil to it to replenish the oil, If it was water tempered trash it. A good source for oil based sand is Pyro Minerals in Oakland CA.

[macona]

Thats funny, a friend recommended Pyro to me last week for getting stuff going at work.

[Your Old Dog]

Great looking job! Makes that shaper come alive. Your patience paid off.

[Bill Pace]

The old sand had a history to it.... back when I got into casting (very little money!) I used builders sand and Gingerys recipe to make it up and it just wasnt very satisfactory. So I went scrounging!! Found a local foundry doing custom Al casting, talked to the owner and he said gimme $50 and you can have a 2-3 hundred lbs of his "used" sand. It would get built up with hundreds of little 'divots/droplets?' of Al and he would discard it. So, having more time than money, I brought it home and sieved all of it and got it back clean -- except for being black as tar! Well, I used that sand for a gazillion castings, refurbed it several times, even converting it over to a "Kbond" mix (a variation of 'Petrobond') But it had gotten to where it would give me problems with an intricate or difficult pattern (which this one was)

6-8 yrs ago I bought 100# of real Petrobond, but just never got around to changing it out, mostly because 100# just wasnt enough to do lots of the things I was doing, So when this project got to giving me heartache, I decided to do it. This pattern was taking just about all of the 150# of the 'K'bond' so I ordered up another 50# from "Budget Supply" http://budgetcastingsupply.com/ $104 w/frt.

For anybody trying to get into casting, this sand would be fine for the general run of simple castings, its a very fine grain and gives very good resolution --- could even likely to be able and refurb it again, as mentioned with some added oil. Its a time consuming process to mix a 150/175# or so properly.

Anybody within driving distance or coming near here, youre welcome to it ... bring 2-3 5gal buckets

[jkilroy]

Don't stop now, I figure you can sell a few dozen of those puppies. Nice work.

[Alistair Hosie]

very nice for first attempt.Well done .Alistair