Arghhh.. I have a ton of IBM work to do tonight and I just am sitting down to do it at 10 PM.. I’m so tired and I want to go to sleep… but If I don’t get these presentations done tonight.. I’ll regret it big time next week. Sometimes I wish for a job where I just had to do 9-5 and I could go home and forget it.. but .. only sometimes

Anyway.. work today was busy and good. I got a ton done.. but even so, only scratched the surface on what I needed to get done.. By the time I left at 6PM I was a whipped puppy.. But.. not rest for the wicked.. I had to go to the Iron Pour place to make more progress on my casing mold in time for Saturday’s pouring. I got there in time to see Elijah demonstrating the last parts of the mold making.. That’s the part where you cut the filling channels and scratch in the vents. You also have to paint everything with graphite release paint. The best part is burning off the solvent in the paint.. looks like cherries jubilee !

The final touches are gluing the two halves of the mold together

And adding the filling cup and vent risers.. It’s wierd gluing sand to sand.. but that’s how it works.

flipped my mold over pulled off the sand, cut the indexing grooves, and moved the mold box up.

I thne dusted the whoel thing with graohite to make the new part release..

I then helped mix 100 pods of sand and resin, filled in the top of my mold and put it aside to cure.

Yolk and Elijh were outside workign on the furnace…

I had one more task for the day.. I had to break enough iron for my mold plus 10 pounds for the flashing… It was nasty hard work.. We used a small hand mallet to smash old radiaors into tiny bite size pieces. After a few year of blacksmitting I leanred never to hit cold metal this hard or it would break. here that was hte idea.. clang, clang, clang.. my ears are still ringing.. but in an hour I smashed about 30 pounds.. nearly twice what I needed !.. And.. I was stress free at the end.. Noth like beating the $%@out of a piece of metal to release tension.

Here’s a pile of prebroken scrap iron

Voila.. 30 pounds of tasy iron nuggets !

OK.. now to my IBM work.. i gotta get going on this.. so .. more tomorrow.. Gnite all.. Gnite sam.. !
-me