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Back Yard Metallurgy
This is project that has consumed my off time from the mine the past couple of weeks. First, it took some understanding of what can and can't be done in the back yard. I had aspirations to melt every bit of scrap metal I could find, forging it into something useful. That turned out to be false as some things are too difficult for me yet. So, after some research I found that aluminum was the easiest to start with. It's also very abundant in the form of cans that you can pick up from about anywhere. So first, melt the cans. That sounds simple enough but it's harder then you think. You need something to put them in and I found a soup can works well as a crucible, however you have to be careful about burning them. Flux helps, although I haven't mastered that yet. The flux is potassium chloride and sodium chloride 50/50 mix.
You also need a hot fire. I used oak. This is from my third try where I finally had some success at melting the aluminum instead of burning it. It works best if you heat the empty soup can in the coals after the fire has gotten good and hot then stack some wood around the crucible.
Piling in crushed cans is going to eventually look like the picture above. The stuff on top that I called the crap while I was making it, is actually called dross. It's a mixture of all the junk that goes into a drink can plus some aluminum oxide that forms when the hot aluminum oxidizes. This was my third try and although all the resources I found said to scrape it off I didn't have a good tool for it and I found it to be unmanageable. What did work was just pouring the molten aluminum out of the can and the crap (dross) stays behind. Below is my nice aluminum ingot I poured into another soup can and let cool. Today I finished making my first Christmas ornament and I will post that part later.
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