How this appeared in my YouTube feed, I don’t recall. Nonetheless, a popular Youtuber by the name of Grant has tons of interesting how-to videos on molding and casting. He seems to do most of his projects on the cheap — for example, smelting soda cans in a forge made with a metal bucket, sand, and plaster. Some of the ideas I saw in his video list appear to be builds from other Youtuber’s designs (or perhaps Instructables), but who cares? He is trying lots of different things and does a good job.
The ideas I want to try soon:
- Vacuum chamber in pressure cooker pot with an acrylic top (for de-gassing molds)
- Vacuum chamber bell jar design for potential science experiments in vacuum
- Making a silicon mold
- Making the sand-plaster forge (with steel wool in the plaster to help reinforce it and make it last longer)
- Casting aluminum ingots from soda cans (I have a lot of soda cans!)
- Casting some kind of interesting artwork with said cans (perhaps using lost wax method)
President’s Week is coming up, and this could be fun for then. Of course, it would be more fun if the kids were involved, and that is always a super big challenge, given their short attention spans!
I’ve been thinking about doing something along this line for years. So I really hope I can make this happen!