I'm really looking forward to this project today
because in this video, we get to play with sand
Now, back when I made my first Mini Metal Foundry,
and used it to melt down soda cans,
I was looking for the most convenient and easy ways to cast that metal.
You've seen the Styrofoam casting method, where we make the object out of Styrofoam,
and bury it in a bucket of sand,
but the problem is, the Styrofoam object always gets destroyed.
I followed up by trying to make some Plaster molds,
but we found that the Plaster cracks, so in this video,
we're trying a method I've actually wanted to try for years, and that's Green Sand casting.
Now, a lot of you watching have probably seen videos on Green Sand casting,
or maybe even tried it yourself,
but because of all my projects, experiments, and productions,
I haven't found the time to play with it myself.
So that's what we're doing today.
The purpose of this video, is to make some high quality Green Sand for metal casting.
Let's get started!
Now, the materials we are going to be using for making our sand are very simple,
I just went down to the local Home Depot, and picked up this 50 lb bag of Play Sand,
that was only about $3.50
Then I went down to Walmart, and picked up this bag of Unscented Kitty Litter for about a $1.50.
Aside from those, we're just gonna need a scale, and a spray bottle of water.
When it comes to casting your metals, the finer the material is that you cast into,
the cleaner your result is going to be.
So we really want the finest sand, and finest clay that we can get.
Unfortunately, with Play Sand like this, you can see that it's not that fine.
And the Kitty Litter we got is Bentonite Clay, but you can see it comes in all kinds of clumps.
So the first thing we need to do to prepare our materials, is screen our sand and crush our Kitty Litter.
Now, while I was down at the super-center, I picked up a couple of different options in strainers,
and while I would love to use the larger one, because it would be quicker,
if you look at the mesh here, you can see the holes are a little bit wider.
That's going to allow larger grains of sand to fall through, and what we really want,
is a fine mesh, like this 3-inch strainer.
If you look at the mesh of this, you can see that only very fine grains of sand are going to be able to get through,
and that's really what we want, even though it's going to take a lot longer.
so first step grab some sand, grab your strainer
get sifting
hey guys I am back from straining my sound and check out what I've done here
I actually used both sets of strainers I use a larger one first to speed up the
process and get the big chunks out then I took the strain pieces of sand and ran
it through this 3-inch strainer to get even finer sand and here are our results
when we pour these four samples we've collected out on a plate you can really
see the difference this first pile here is the regular sand that's straight from
the bag the pile over here on the far right is the stuff we strained off using
our larger strainer the next pile is the stuff we strained off using the 3-inch
strainer this last pile here is the stuff that was left over and you can see
it's extremely fine sand everything else has been filtered off and only the
smallest particles remain and you can definitely see that when you compare it
to the other piles now depending on the mesh of your strainers you could
actually get your sand so fine it would almost be like a powder but of course
you're going to have to invest some time into the process now I found an even
quicker and easier way to get this done is just go down to your local pet store
and pick up a bag of aquarium sand this stuff is already super fine and really
well sifted it's gonna cost you about $8 a bag but that's well worth your time
in fact these particles of sand are so small it's even finer than the stuff we
just made ourselves but I'm going to put both of them to the test now the next
step is to pulverize our kitty litter and we could do that in a couple of
different ways we could pour it into a blender and grind it up or we could just
stick it in a freezer bag and pound it with a mallet
in either case once we've got it all crushed up we are going to need to
filter that but we're not going to need to do nearly as much when we mix these
things together we're going to use a ratio of about 95% sand and only 5 to
10% clay so we're not going to need much
the stuff that comes out of blender is really really fine it's almost like
powder but remember this stuff is going to wreck your blades so make sure it's a
blender you don't care too much about so here we are guys we've got our clay
pulverized and sifted to a point where it has a consistency of powdered sugar
over here we have our hand sifted sand and over here we have our aquarium sand
so now all we have to do is mix them together in a ratio of about 95% sand
and 5 to 10 percent clay and we're going to measure them by weight using a scale
so update guys I went ahead and measured out all the different ingredients here
we've got our aquarium stand and we've got our hand sifted sand here I've got
475 grams in each of these cups now to make this a ninety five five ratio I
also measured out 25 grams of clay into each of these cups what we have to do
now is pour in the clay and mix these up thoroughly there are a lot of different
ways you can mix this stuff together you could throw it in a blender stir it with
a stick or even just grab a couple of cups and pour it back a few times until
everything looks thoroughly constituted so here we are we've got our two sample
size batches thoroughly mixed and ready to go all that's left to do now is add a
little water now the key to make you really good green sand is we want it to
be moist but we do not want it to be wet I think the easiest way to do this is
just pick our sand and gently spread it out on something like a plate to expose
more surface area then using a spray water bottle we'll adjust the nozzle so
it has a fine spray and we'll just gently miss the top of the sand when you
spray a little water you're going to notice the sand changes color when it
does you want to go ahead and just thoroughly mix that in until all the
color disappears go ahead and keep doing this until your sand gets the
consistency where you think would be great for making sand castles
now I've sprayed a fair amount of water here to the point where the sand doesn't
change color anymore and I mixed it thoroughly but you can see when I grab a
handful now and squeeze it when I let it go it just cracks and crumbles apart and
that probably means we don't have enough clay so at this point we can start
mixing together a little bit more clay and mix it in thoroughly until it gets
the port where we can squeeze it firmly and have it all hold together
quick update guys I went ahead and added more clay powder to this mixture and now
it's somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of the total composition and now the
stand has reached the consistency where if I grab it and squeeze it in my hand
you can see it leaves a little clump and if we take that clump it's nice and firm
but if we give it a little snap it breaks cleanly right down the center
I believe that's what we're looking for the recipe I had was 5 percent clay but
it seems 15 to 20 percent clay works a little bit better with the place and
that I'm using here let's see how that compares to the aquarium's end so check
this out guys I've just mixed up our aquarium sand and this time I only use
10% clay but if we do a stop check you can see a balls-up in my hand just as
nicely as we'd hope it would and if we crack it down the center we got a nice
clean break I think this stuff is done with 10 percent clay and I think it's
attributed to the moisture content it's a very fine balance though because you
don't want this stuff dripping wet so guys it looks like our green sand
experiment was a success in both the aquarium sand and the place and the only
real difference I've noticed between the two is how much time you want to spend
sifting it out okay let's recap we start off our experiment today with a full bag
of place sand and family we could use different sized strainers to get the
finest sand possible next we crushed up some unscented kitty litter bentonite
clay until it was a fine powder to match the mesh of our sand we mix them
together in a ratio of 95% sand 5% clay and found that that wasn't
enough to make them stick together so we added more clay until it was closer to
15% the clay seems to be the glue that holds the whole composition together and
the water is the ingredient that activates it so we added a mist of water
one squirt at a time until the sand reached a consistency where we could
squeeze it in our hand and form a clump that would hold its shape we could tell
the sound was ready by holding the clump between two fingers and giving the
little tug a clean break right down the center indicates the sand is ready to
use so now that we've got our two sample batches I think from here on out I'm
using aquarium sand because it's a lot quicker and more convenient to use so
how is our freshly made green sand going to hold up to actual metal casting well
I'm going to make up a whole big batch of this stuff store it in an airtight
container and we'll test it tomorrow thanks for joining me for this
experiment guys I'll be looking for you the next one talk to you then
whoa and came out faster than expected hey guys thanks for watching and
remember I'm giving away prizes now on every new video all you have to do to
qualify is subscribe to my channel ring the bell and select to be notified when
my next videos get released the secret link to my giveaways will be pinned in
the comments for the first 12 hours if you like what I'm doing show your
support right now by giving this video a big thumbs up and share with a friend I
love you back I'll see you next time