First Casting Meeting

On campus, I am the faculty advisor for the metal casing club, “What The Foundry”.
Monday was their first official meeting, and I think we have a good bunch of students ready to do some metal casting.

Three of the students approached me during Junior Design last year as they needed some aluminum parts and had no idea how to make them.  Seeing as most of the casting  operations have disappeared from high school shop class (for that matter, most of the shop classes have disappeared), I set them up with a propane-fired furnace and some no-bake casting sand.

They ran with it, and really had a great time, volunteering to ram sand molds, build flasks, meet with people needing metal casting and pour metal.

Two of the members were scheduled to weld some stainless steel cruicbles this week, and another two were set to buy some plaster and charcoal, as we are going to buils charcoal furnaces to do something a little different.

I am really proud of these guys!

Thank you for reading my post.

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Traces of the Past by David Weitzman

I recently finished reading Traces of the Past by David Weitzman.  If you have been following my blog, you saw that I have posted reviews about the chapters of this book over the past few months.

This book is a tremendous resource; a collection of tips and tricks for identifying hardware in the wilderness.  It covers railroad markers, bridges, blast furnaces and oil derricks in great detail.

I also appreciated the last chapter, which discussed taking children into the outdoors to draw pictures of bridges.  This lets their natural curiosity drive questions about differences in bridges and how bridges are made.

Thank you for reading my very brief book review.

Sources:
Weitzman, David.  Traces of the Past.  Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, USA, 1980.

SIA Activity This Week

I am part of the way through the next chapter in the book I am reading, which is all about blast furnaces.  I found this particularly fascinating, as my metallurgy education did not cover much about them.  At this point, iron and steel are made by electric arc rather than blast furnaces, so I guess all of my professors skipped over this part to talk about the way things were headed in metallurgy instead.

I also found out about a local historian that might be a good contact for industrial sites in New Mexico.  I will have to follow up on this.

Thank you for reading my post.

Traces of the Past, Ch. 3 and Ch. 4

I have been reading “Traces of the Past:  A Field Guide to Industrial Archaeology By David Weitzman, the 1980 printing.   I misplaced the book a few months ago, and just recently found it again.

Chapter 3 was a collection of historical data and figures about different truss designs, particularly for railroad bridges.  The real advantage to this chapter is using it to identify the age of an unknown bridge, as there are quite a few tips and tricks for estimating the age.  Some of them have to do with the actual design and who patented each piece, and some have to do with the construction methods, such as the use of cotter pins, riveted joints and so on.

Chapter 4 was similar to Chapter 3, only it discusses roof trusses instead of bridge trusses.

Now that I have found this book again, I will post more about it in the days to come.

Thank you for reading my post.

Sources:
Weitzman, David.  Traces of the Past:  A Field Guide to Industrial Archaeology.  Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1980.