Boredom strikes.

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74Dusted

74Dusted

Stock Piler of 340's
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What do you do when you have several tons of scrap aluminum piled up (because junk isn't worth crap) and you're bored?

You repurpose a turn of the century wood stove and a rusty tailpipe and hair dryer into a forge.

Amazing what kind of flame you can get from one tiny piece of firewood and a hair dryer set on the lowest position. Within 10 minutes the cast iron walls of wood stove were glowing cherry red and it was melting down aluminum as fast as I could drop it into the crucible.

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Valiant63 said:
So what did you do with the melted aluminum? Did you ave any molds or???
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I made them into ingots for easy storage and future melts (I only melted down about 50 pounds out of the several tons of aluminum scrap.)

I plan to experiment with molds and casting and maybe eventually cast custom parts.
 
There is an old guy near me that melts down old Turbo 350 transmission cases and makes them into repro speed shop license tags. The only speed shop in town when I was a kid was called Eddie Joyners Speed Equipment, and they had cast aluminum tags for the front of cars. They went out of business in the late 70's. John makes the tags with sand castings that he makes from an original tag. He hasn't made a run of them in a while, and I have my name on the list to get one when he does. If you want to see something cool....look on You Tube and find the video of the dude that pours molten aluminum down and ant hill, and then digs it out. I can't remember the name of it, but it's easy to find.
 
diymirage said:
ive fired aluminum ammo before
just saying
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Hmmm. How well does that work in comparison to reloading with lead?

JDMopar said:
There is an old guy near me that melts down old Turbo 350 transmission cases and makes them into repro speed shop license tags. The only speed shop in town when I was a kid was called Eddie Joyners Speed Equipment, and they had cast aluminum tags for the front of cars. They went out of business in the late 70's. John makes the tags with sand castings that he makes from an original tag. He hasn't made a run of them in a while, and I have my name on the list to get one when he does. If you want to see something cool....look on You Tube and find the video of the dude that pours molten aluminum down and ant hill, and then digs it out. I can't remember the name of it, but it's easy to find.
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I've seen the ant hill video a few times, it's nifty. Also pretty cool about that guy making tags from 350 cases.
 
Did you say several TONS of aluminum scrap?? Nice!!

We live about 15 minutes from a MASSIVE aluminum company called Logan Aluminum, last I heard they provide all the aluminum sheeting that is used in pop/beer cans in the US. They haul ingots in there by semi and train. Those ingots are huge. Probably 3x5x20 or something like that. I'd love to have just one. Lol

Just the other day I thought instead of hauling crushed cans and other aluminum scrap into the scrap yard I might start melting it down into small ingots and stack em up somewhere until scrap is high again.

*EDIT* I just watched the production video on Logan Aluminum's website and they provide 40% of the materials for beverage cans, but they are the largest producer in the US
 
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75slant6 said:
Did you say several TONS of aluminum scrap?? Nice!!

We live about 15 minutes from a MASSIVE aluminum company called Logan Aluminum, last I heard they provide all the aluminum sheeting that is used in pop/beer cans in the US. They haul ingots in there by semi and train. Those ingots are huge. Probably 3x5x20 or something like that. I'd love to have just one. Lol

Just the other day I thought instead of hauling crushed cans and other aluminum scrap into the scrap yard I might start melting it down into small ingots and stack em up somewhere until scrap is high again.
Click to expand...

Yeah, several tons. I looked at the pile one day and then looked at my Dumptruck (with a 9-1/2' Dumpbed) and realized I had no hope of hauling it in like that and that's where the idea sprung forth. I was bored and thought "hey, if I melted it down, it would take less trips to haul."

Once I started to melt it down, I thought about how nice it'd be to actually turn those cubes of fresh aluminum into car parts. Start out with simple stuff (bezels, emblems, etc) and work my way up to really wild stuff (intakes, heads, etc)
 
This is also something that happens when boredom strikes...

What started out as a joke, took a turn for the more serious. What happens when a friend cracks a joke about a Blower on a 4 Cylinder Pickup and you just so happen to have an M90 Blower off of a 3.8L

Poor little 2.4L in the Dodge D50 4x4 is getting a Blower (she already has a Laser Turbo ECU, Injectors, etc, so she's already set to run boost). I'm gonna have to drastically under drive the Blower though, or the boost will be off the charts, considering the M90 is for a 3.8L and the little Dodge has a 2.4L

She already earned a new nickname and I haven't finished the install. She's now the "SRT4-X4"

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74Dusted said:
Hmmm. How well does that work in comparison to reloading with lead?
.
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Not sure on the reloading part, I just bought and shot it
I believe it was called tull-ammo

It cycled through my pistols just fine

Actually, now that I think about it...those were aluminum casings, not bullets, nevermind
 
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