Amaya Blackstone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
special_rabbit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2021-01-21 03:57 am
special_rabbit) wrote in fandomhigh2021-01-21 03:57 am
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Shop Class; Thursday, Second Period [01/21].
"Welcome back, everyone," Amaya greeted the students with a nod as the period began. "I hope you're ready to get back to work. Especially since now we can start using those forges we worked on last week and get a real feel for how forge work really comes together.
"Today, we'll be making metal biscuits, which I don't recommend actually eating, unless hard aluminium is something that's already a part of your normal diet. You can see we've got ourselves a few buckets of old and empty aluminum soda cans here," she gave one such bucket a little kick to make the contents rattle slightly, "which we'll be melting down into our metal. So not only is it pretty neat, but it's also a good way to recycle. Go ahead and grab your foundries and I'll show you how we're doing this, and then you guys can just go at it. And remember, safety first, so please make sure you've got some heat resistant gloves while you're working and some goggles wouldn't be a bad idea, either.
"First off, we're going to remove the crucible from the center and load in about five charcoal briquettes for our heat and return the crucible. Insert the blow shaft," cough, and that's going to help up enter the heat to get the forge nice and hot. Traditionally, I'd use something like a bellows for this, but for the sake of time and because we might as well use the technology available to us, I picked up a few hair dryers that we'll use for our air source. Honestly, it's a much better use for these things than their original intention, too, if you ask me. Go ahead and tape the dryer to the pipe and we'll use a bucket to prop it up to the right angle so we can just let it go while we work. This angle will also help put less stress on the walls of our forge so it last longer, too.
"Now that that's set up, we'll fill up the remaining space outside the crucible with more charcoal, and we'll get things heated up. There are plenty of ways to heat your forge, of course, but we're going with the quick and convenient and taking advantage of our technology method with some propane torches, which work well for an even heat distribution. Once your coals get that nice glow to them, turn on the dryer to the low setting to keep the air flowing through to keep the heat nice and steady. Go ahead and pop the lids we made on top, to help keep the heat in, and the holes we've got in them now will allow us to still feed the forge while maintaining our best heat. In something like this, temperature isn't too important, so long as it's hot, but in more detailed and specific work, maintaining a temp can make the difference between a good forge and a bad.
"It should take about ten minutes for our forges to get up to temp, so take a moment to get some cans, a pair of tongs, and take a look at the these steel metal baking pans of different designs, from your basic simple muffins to some with designs that are a bit more interesting. Great thing about forging is that you can use any mold you'd like, you just want to make sure it's steel, otherwise you're going to have a bad, melty time. I've got plenty offully moddable options here, though, so hopefully there's something you'll like. Take a few moment, pick something about, grab a drink, and we'll come back and see how our forges are doing."
Once ten minute so had passed, Amaya called them all back to action. "Let's grab those tongs for a moment, use them to remove your lid and take a look to see if your crucible is glowing bright orange. If it is, great! We're ready to go! If not, just give it a few more minutes. We can crank our dryers up to full power to melt more cans at a quicker pace, too, so go ahead and do that, and let's start melting these babies down. It's pretty simple, just carefully drop--and now you'll see why the gloves are important!--the cans into the crucible, push 'em down a little with your tongs, and repeat! We should be able to melt about fifty cans before our crucible is full. Don't worry too much about labels or a little leftover liquid on and in the cans too much; a lot of liquid can be bad, but a little won't hurt, and the forge is hot enough that it's going to melt out the impurities.
"You'll notice," Amaya said, as they finished, rolling her tongs in the silvery melted metal in her crucible and pulling out some of the dross to show them, "that there's a lot of gunk on top from the impurities, but don't worry too much. As we pour, you'll see it works as a strainer for the good stuff. So use your tongs to get a good grip on the crucible, carefully remove it, and then carefully start to fill the pan you picked out. If there's a little fire, don't worry too much about it, you just got a pan with a non-stick coating and that's just burning off. While those are cooling, take a moment to empty out the dross on your crucible so it's ready to go for the next time; easiest way to do this is just to beat it empty on a concrete slab."
Which of course she did. "After they've cooled down a little, you can still see that they're rather hot; give it a minute or two more while you go fill these buckets with some cold water. We're going to use that to cool them down a little quicker, but you'll find that the ingots are so hot, they'll bring the water up to an instant boil, but that'll cool pretty quickly, too, and you could probably pick them up with your hands if you wanted to. We're still going to use the tongs to remove them from the water, though, because it never hurts to be a little safer.
"And that's all there is to it! Now we've either got some nifty little aluminum trinkets or a good handful of pure aluminum ingots that we can actually use later if we wanted to make something a little nicer. All you have to do is just toss them back into the crucible, melt them down again for a few minutes, and you've got a crucible filled with almost entirely pure aluminum, save for a little film on top. This gives you a better, more pure metal to work with for future projects, without having to deal with that initial dross we had when we melted down the cans.
"We've got a little more time, so feel free to melt down some more cans and use a variety of the pans to try something else or try melting down what you've made this first time around and do a second pour with a purer metal. Don't forget to save a little time at the end to empty out the ashes in your forge before you leave as well, and let me know if there's any questions, of course."
"Today, we'll be making metal biscuits, which I don't recommend actually eating, unless hard aluminium is something that's already a part of your normal diet. You can see we've got ourselves a few buckets of old and empty aluminum soda cans here," she gave one such bucket a little kick to make the contents rattle slightly, "which we'll be melting down into our metal. So not only is it pretty neat, but it's also a good way to recycle. Go ahead and grab your foundries and I'll show you how we're doing this, and then you guys can just go at it. And remember, safety first, so please make sure you've got some heat resistant gloves while you're working and some goggles wouldn't be a bad idea, either.
"First off, we're going to remove the crucible from the center and load in about five charcoal briquettes for our heat and return the crucible. Insert the blow shaft," cough, and that's going to help up enter the heat to get the forge nice and hot. Traditionally, I'd use something like a bellows for this, but for the sake of time and because we might as well use the technology available to us, I picked up a few hair dryers that we'll use for our air source. Honestly, it's a much better use for these things than their original intention, too, if you ask me. Go ahead and tape the dryer to the pipe and we'll use a bucket to prop it up to the right angle so we can just let it go while we work. This angle will also help put less stress on the walls of our forge so it last longer, too.
"Now that that's set up, we'll fill up the remaining space outside the crucible with more charcoal, and we'll get things heated up. There are plenty of ways to heat your forge, of course, but we're going with the quick and convenient and taking advantage of our technology method with some propane torches, which work well for an even heat distribution. Once your coals get that nice glow to them, turn on the dryer to the low setting to keep the air flowing through to keep the heat nice and steady. Go ahead and pop the lids we made on top, to help keep the heat in, and the holes we've got in them now will allow us to still feed the forge while maintaining our best heat. In something like this, temperature isn't too important, so long as it's hot, but in more detailed and specific work, maintaining a temp can make the difference between a good forge and a bad.
"It should take about ten minutes for our forges to get up to temp, so take a moment to get some cans, a pair of tongs, and take a look at the these steel metal baking pans of different designs, from your basic simple muffins to some with designs that are a bit more interesting. Great thing about forging is that you can use any mold you'd like, you just want to make sure it's steel, otherwise you're going to have a bad, melty time. I've got plenty of
Once ten minute so had passed, Amaya called them all back to action. "Let's grab those tongs for a moment, use them to remove your lid and take a look to see if your crucible is glowing bright orange. If it is, great! We're ready to go! If not, just give it a few more minutes. We can crank our dryers up to full power to melt more cans at a quicker pace, too, so go ahead and do that, and let's start melting these babies down. It's pretty simple, just carefully drop--and now you'll see why the gloves are important!--the cans into the crucible, push 'em down a little with your tongs, and repeat! We should be able to melt about fifty cans before our crucible is full. Don't worry too much about labels or a little leftover liquid on and in the cans too much; a lot of liquid can be bad, but a little won't hurt, and the forge is hot enough that it's going to melt out the impurities.
"You'll notice," Amaya said, as they finished, rolling her tongs in the silvery melted metal in her crucible and pulling out some of the dross to show them, "that there's a lot of gunk on top from the impurities, but don't worry too much. As we pour, you'll see it works as a strainer for the good stuff. So use your tongs to get a good grip on the crucible, carefully remove it, and then carefully start to fill the pan you picked out. If there's a little fire, don't worry too much about it, you just got a pan with a non-stick coating and that's just burning off. While those are cooling, take a moment to empty out the dross on your crucible so it's ready to go for the next time; easiest way to do this is just to beat it empty on a concrete slab."
Which of course she did. "After they've cooled down a little, you can still see that they're rather hot; give it a minute or two more while you go fill these buckets with some cold water. We're going to use that to cool them down a little quicker, but you'll find that the ingots are so hot, they'll bring the water up to an instant boil, but that'll cool pretty quickly, too, and you could probably pick them up with your hands if you wanted to. We're still going to use the tongs to remove them from the water, though, because it never hurts to be a little safer.
"And that's all there is to it! Now we've either got some nifty little aluminum trinkets or a good handful of pure aluminum ingots that we can actually use later if we wanted to make something a little nicer. All you have to do is just toss them back into the crucible, melt them down again for a few minutes, and you've got a crucible filled with almost entirely pure aluminum, save for a little film on top. This gives you a better, more pure metal to work with for future projects, without having to deal with that initial dross we had when we melted down the cans.
"We've got a little more time, so feel free to melt down some more cans and use a variety of the pans to try something else or try melting down what you've made this first time around and do a second pour with a purer metal. Don't forget to save a little time at the end to empty out the ashes in your forge before you leave as well, and let me know if there's any questions, of course."
Class Activity - Metal Muffins! - Shop Class, 01/21.
Re: Class Activity - Metal Muffins! - Shop Class, 01/21.