Unwrapping before Christmas

The trek Southward to warmer, drier destinations has been very relaxing. We have arrived somewhat refreshed.

I have been unwrapping and examining some of the projects that will require a degree of finishing before their service life can begin. Most of the finishing touches are minor in nature because these castings are so clean. This can only be attributed to high grade raw materials and a series of near perfect temperature pours.

The aluminum pulleys that were cast in the summer need some de-burring, hand scraping, machining of the journals and balancing before the installation on the wind powered grey water pump here. They match the belt specification on my stock drives perfectly confirming my correct calculation for shrinkage after the pour cooled.
The counterbalanced flywheel for the offset tine drive in my drum style fast composter is also close to perfect, only requiring tiny adjustments for balancing. Some scraping to improve the aesthetics will be desirable and amount to a few hours labour.

For now, the unpacking will be on 'hold' until some minor repairs are completed on the homestead. It seems that some the Summer winds were a little more severe than anticipated. My grounds keeper hadn't indicated there was damage in our last communication - puzzling. Perhaps I will fire up my gasifier and cast some aluminum corner caps for the awnings rather than repair the flimsy siding channels that are in place there now. The castings will be more rigid and durable so I won't have to replace them for ten years or so. The runners will be a little tricky to place due to the complexity of the mould but a little extra bulk should fill the voids adequately. A material recovery melt for the 30 or so pounds of shredded aircraft aluminium that I have on hand here should accommodate these caps.

I did prepare for some melting activity by transporting 20 ingots of reclaimed aluminium (about 130 pounds) for raw materials for when I get the urge to build something after Christmas. My neighbor dropped off 2 broken tops from old gas bar-b-cues (it is always good to educate your neighbors as to what you can use). These will yield about 18 pounds of ingots and will only cost me a dinner for him and his better half. We would entertain them anyway but it shows good exchange practice, Having collaborated before in couple of industrial control projects, we have become quite good friends.

I plan to provide some working diagrams of the miniature downdraft gasifier in the near future and perhaps I will dig up some photos of the first one built. It is a very simple and safe melter that anyone can build with new or used parts. It can be sized to use 2 to 5 pound aluminium capacity standard refractory crucibles and uses wood chips or charcoal for fuel.

Enough unwrapped for now, until next time.