u/NorthKOs

Pretty frustrated with greensand overall. I've got my furnace going fine, my alloys come out good, but I cannot get greensand to work right. I've been just doing sand cast with foam for lost foam, but it's hit or miss with the knife I'm trying to cast.

The third image is the knife blank, yes I know it's a funky shape for the tang but it's what my design calls for. I am trying to cast it with aluminum bronze for use as a veggie/soft cutter.

Since I've had the issues with foam casting, I decided to bite the bullet and make some greensand. I don't have the budget to get petrobond or just buy greensand, so I am making it myself. I've been sitting all day, and got 25 pounds of fine sifted sand. I crushed up and sifted 3 pounds of bentonite clay for a 10-12% clay-sand mix. I got that all mixed together while adding about 30 oz of water as I went and... It kinda of sticks together. I can't tell if I have put too much water or not enough. I had to mix it all by hand, which took me 3 hours or so. It was sticking together better, but that only lasted long enough to pack a mold before it changed and now doesn't stick as well.

AND the sand didn't mold the knife blank well at all. I used baking soda to make it not get stuck in the 3d printed blank, but the blank fell out as I lifted the first part to flip over for the second part.

I just don't know what I am doing and no amount of YouTube videos showing how "easy" it is has helped me. Any advice is appreciated.

As the title says. I have a dinky home foundry/furnace. I switched from kaowool to refractory cement (a la KOR recipe), and in doing so I moved the location of my burner. Before, it was good and I melted some aluminum bronze, tin bronze, and a couple other metals for some projects. It took a bit longer than it should, but the crappy regulator is the issue there, and it did get up to temp to melt.

Yesterday and today both, I tried melting a scrap of tin bronze to cast a ring. Yesterday I ran out of propane, but the internal area was too confined and the burner was at a bad angle. I fixed that today, opened up the inner space more and adjusted the burner angle. Got the inside and the crucible yellow hot. But the scrap of bronze just turned into a crumbly black mess. It didn't sweat like the original melt of it. Just blackened and burnt. I had it in the crucible from the start, which definitely didn't help.

Right now I am considering a couple things, and I could use some advice on what to do here. My thoughts are A) maybe the burner location sucks, and I can move it back to the old spot (shown in image 3 with the green flames), B) I could modify the burner to add a blower if it is a ratio problem (this is the burner), or C) I could make a new furnace with the larger propane tank I have lying around.

Any advice is appreciated, and I'm hoping to get it back up by the weekend if possible. My budget is basically 0 at this point too.