I made this aluminum stock on my Atlas 618. I show how I did it on my "Journey to Journeyman"

J

jster1963

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Hey guys, I pretty proud of the aluminum stock I made on my Atlas 618 lathe. I melted aluminum cans in my back yard and turned it on my lathe. It turned out very nice and I'm pretty proud of it. If you want to see how I did it, you can check out my you tube video. It is in my series "Journey to Journeyman" episode 5.

http://youtu.be/kNAfMtsAVd0

ps. I lightly polished one end just to see how it would look.

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Nice looking piece of aluminum.
I've been thinking I need to start smelting and casting stock for my projects, save the 100 mile round trip to the metal supplier not to mention the cost of aluminum stock now a days.
 
about how many cans did you have to melt down to make that round ??
 
Gar: I'm really shocked at this aluminum! There are quite a few guys on youtube that say it's a waste of time to try to use cans. They say how much junk you have to deal with. There is a lot of dross, but for me, it's well worth the hassle. Thanks for the comment.....

chuckorlando: I have been changing my oil for years and saving the old oil. I plan to use waste oil for the foundry I plan to build. The charcoal works great, but you have to keep adding more. Thanks.......

nightowl499: I planned to keep track of exactly how many cans it took, but with all the problems I had, I lost track. I plan to make a foundry that uses waste oil as the fuel. I will keep track of the amount of cans when I do that project. Thanks.....
 
I intend to build a foundry my self with a goal of cast iron, steel would be even better. But I have a full size truck tool box with the bottom coroded out. As well as a few hundred pounds of other alum I could melt down.
 
Please make a video when you do that. That will be cool to see!
 
Neat. I tried to melt some cans but the propane burner I used didn't get the iron skillet hot enough. We have some old fuel nozzles from micro turbine Gen sets at work that I thought about trying to use, they have pretty large holes in em. They are made to run the turbine on natural gas.
 
When I was in hot metals class in school, we used to break up old aluminum Briggs & Stratton engine blocks for use in the foundry. Common and easy to find, and no worries about running across magnesium. I'm sure Tecumseh engines would work just as well. It takes a *lot* of soda or beer cans to make ingots!

Jster, if you throw a party at your house, we'll drink as much beer and soda as we can to keep your supply of raw materials up :biggrin:

GG
 
I started cutting open caterpillar oil filters and saving the aluminum hubs to melt. Nice big chunk of cast alum. I put them in a can on top of a Ashless burner and it melted em down but not enough where it was a solid block. There were pockets
 
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