hi I'm Cressel Anderson this is Makercise this is an extra-special episode
because Johnny Brooke over at crafted workshop has been talking with me about
doing a collaboration video for a while involving casting metal which I have a
propensity for as well as his natural inclination for fine wood work when you
couple that with Mike Montgomery from modern builds being in town was the
perfect storm for the ultimate molten aluminum Lake table check it out before
we could get started I had my homework to do
I used a small piece of poplar to cast this table and I noticed after casting
it that legs were a little floppy in fact one of them's completely missing
now but it gave me a good idea as to what to expect when I cast metal into
wood I had an absolute blast working with Johnny and Mike but the fact of the
matter is we were really just doing a big experiment during this project I had
several questions after we completed the project related to the things that make
pouring metal into woods successful we really didn't generate enough data
points at Johnny shop to be able to definitively point to things that work
well and don't work well I wanted to get a better idea about how different
species of wood compare when you pour metal into them and so I took some off
cuts of some slabs that I have over at the property slabs of walnut red oak and
poplar and I cut off some test pieces to use from those I also have some milled
lumber that's white oak pine and then I had a piece of Ipe that I got from Doug
Jackson over SV seeker when I went to help him with his project last summer so
I used those pieces to make tests for different types of woods all my test
pieces had a whole board all the way through and most of them had a
countersink on one side
to give the tests a little bit more usefulness for me in the future I cut
some pieces of polystyrene so that they would fit in the holes in the different
species of wood these will burn out and leave metal in the shape of those pieces
I also wanted to investigate the effect of modifications to the hole
these included things like drilling countersinks on both sides of the test
piece drilling holes on the inside of the through-hole and installing screws
on the sides of the through-hole although it's not exactly a scientific
approach the data that I generate in these tests I feel like it's valuable
for me should I decide to do this again in the future I set up a sand base in
which to position my test parts I embedded the foam piece down in the sand
and this way as the molten aluminum pours in it burns away the foam and
replaces it with metal then it should solidify
unfortunately some of the metal made its way out on one or two of the pieces and
I had to just kind of wait for it to set up and then I came back a little later
to finish off the poor I couldn't get all the test parts on the
cart the first time around so I repositioned the remaining two walnut
and Ipe and then poured them as well
after completing all the wood species test pieces I went ahead and lined up my
whole geometry test pieces and these pieces again are just variations on the
whole things like extra countersink snow countersink screws holes drilled in the
side and the addition of water
after a little bit of cleanup the results are in and it doesn't seem to
matter which species of wood you select both the thick piece of red oak as well
as the Ipe all the other species they all had similar amounts of play in the
pieces that I cast into them again the red oak and the Ipe seem to have a
little bit of an edge but when it comes right down to it it didn't seem to
matter that much which species of wood they all kind of had about the same
performance the geometry test holes did yield much more useful information and
I've arranged them from left to right in ascending order the right being the most
secure so starting on the left it was a through hole with no countersink and
then you have a single countersink then you've got side holes then you've got
the one that I poured water on at the end
next up you've got double counter sinks this is where you've got counter sinks
on both sides of the workpiece and then finally the screws and the screw one I
could not even perceive any motion in that cast piece in Johnny's video he
gave his perspective on how screws impact the cast insert I added some
screws to the inside of the void thinking that this would help him give
the aluminum something to kind of grab on to but we actually forgot to do this
on the actual slab and it didn't seem to make much of a difference so I don't
know that this was actually necessary while the table turned out super I
really do believe that the geometry plays a big role
I think screws can be one of the most effective ways to add geometry to a
rather plain hole in our case the geometry of the slab with the knot the
ant tunnels they'll created a rather conducive space for the molten aluminum
to solidify and have a good registration between the slab and the cast aluminum
insert big thanks to Mike and Johnny for including me in this project it was a
ton of fun if you guys don't already subscribe to their channels definitely
go check them out if you're not subscribed to this channel please do so
and that way you can follow other casting and machining
related videos click the notification bell in that way you'll be sure not to
miss any stand if you're interested in building your own portable aluminum
foundry I've got a great article on my website as well as a video which I'll
also link down in the description or up in the cards I hope this project builds
your confidence to exercise your inner maker thanks for watching