First fire up of Furnace

We tried the furnace last evening. The first pic shows the set up. Second pic shows that we broke the top piece, and that the fire was not getting eonugh air to get to high heat. Picture three and four shows the added air. That gave us the heat to melt the aluminum. We aslo melted the can that we were using for the crucibel. So we will have to do something else for the melting pot.

Home Made Foundry Furnace For Aluminum Cans

Forest and I were wondering what to do with an empty Old Crow Resurve bottle, when one of us thought that we could build a furnace around it. So we did.

Slow it goes

Continuing to work of 10X10

Starting to work on the 10X10 again. I flew to Denver for the opening of the West line of the light rail, and wanted to give special honors to those who worked on the start up of the original start of the Denver Light Rail, back in 1994. We started with 12 trains and just over 6 miles of track. Now they have 172 trains and I not sure how many miles of track with this West Line added.
So anyway; when I got back Brahm and Dagmar were at the house for a few days and we goofed around and I didn't get anything accomplished. Good times with the kids though. So yesterday after work I went to the Dermatologist and had the stitches taken out of my head (another story of skin cancer) and went home and started putting the concrete edge around the brick floor. I just want to have the bottom of the walls off the ground a few inches. I will use pressure treated lumber, so I shouldn't have any problems. Here is a picture that I took this morning. That is all for now, take care.

10X10 Work Shop (Post #2)

I ran short of the granite screening and had to get another yard. I finished filling the forms with the screenings and dug a channel, and put the tubing down and covered it up with the screenings. The tubing wanted to pull out of the screenings so I had to completely cover it as I went along and could not get any pictures of the tubing lay out. There are 8 rows and extra along the bottom to return the tubing to within 8 inches of of the starting point.  Then I packed it down, leveled  the top even and started laying paving bricks. I got about half done and ran into fire ants where I had the paving bricks stacked. As I was using the bricks I uncovered 2 snakes and 1 lizard. That was still not enough to consume the ants. I do not like to use pesticides, but I don't like fire ants. I gave in am hoping that my hens stay away from that area. Anyway; I will wait till next weekend and see if I can get the rest of the paving bricks laid. Here are a couple of  pictures of where I'm at with it.

The tubing entrance and exit point

Brick Pavers at a 45