welding up some tanks

i had a defect paughco tank that got cut up with a plasma cutter at the factory n stuck it back together with sil bronze. also started putting one of my lost wax tanks together. the cast aluminum has so much crap in it its very slow going tigging this thing together. contamination city. the steel tank will get cut back up nto some other shape and the aluminum one still needs all kinds of work.

wet sanding aluminum

cast tank, some 220 grit and streaming old time radio in the shed isnt too bad of a way to spend the evening.

matching pairs

aluminum gas tanks de gating.

i went a little overboard gating these tanks. im paying for it now. you can also see how bad the hydrogen in the aluminum messed up my one piece tank. there is a lot of tweaking and cleanup i need to do .

hydrogen in aluminum pour

well my one piece tank didnt come out of the shell clean. there was hydrogen in the aluminum from not degassing enough or something. i guess if you want something done right you have to do it twice. frustrating when you do everything right and something stupid like this happens. i didnt take many pictures of the one piece cause i was pretty dissapointed. the other side to my 2 piece barely made it. there was a lot of porosity in the gating but the carved parts survived. looks like i will get 2 or 3 tanks out of this i hope.

carved tanks poured

   

well it was a 8 or so crucible night, everything got poured including my carved tanks. i only had time to crack one shell and it looks pretty good. tomorrow morning i will get the rest unveiled. super stoked right now. lots of stress is gone.

aluminum gas tanks

here is where i am so far. most of the plain ones are cast. now the carved ones need to be poured. And here is a photo of shane loading bronze into the furnace.

second mold shell firing

melted out the wax from the inlay tank half. had a few cracks i marked with iron oxide. it goes in the kiln now to burn out any residual wax and carbon and then i will patch the cracks and reenforce the shell before its next trip to the kiln and hopefully succesfull aluminum pour.

investment dipping and fiberglass wrapping

after about the 4th dip a layer of fiberglass is needed to strengthen the shell. i channeled my inner basket weaver for these ones.

shell dipping and gating one piece tank

all done with my wax work. from now on i just need to keep adding layers of shell till i can melt out the wax and pour in some molten metal! hopefully i can use those two sprues at the back to tap and thread for petcocks.

one piece wax gas tank carving

i really tried to finish this today but with shaping and polishing and carving i couldnt get it done. we got kicked out of the studio late tonight and i finished carving at home. im really late on the dipping process so hopefully tomorrow i can get the gating system put on and start putting on the shell.