The melting and pouring of any metal is hazardous - take GREAT care if any of the following books persuade you to try it...

Foundrywork for the Amateur Aspin • £ 6.95 • (G) Add to shopping basket

The Backyard Foundry Aspin • £ 6.95 • (G) Add to shopping basket See Workshop Practice series in the "Engineering" section. Very good books on patternmaking, moulding and pouring techniques.

Metalcasting - appropriate technology in the small foundry Hurst • £ 17.95 • (E) An excellent book aimed at those wanting to start serious metal melting on a commercial, or semi-commercial basis. Intended as a guide to aid workers in third world countries, and containing one heck of a lot of information on all aspects of foundry work. It will be of interest to anyone thinking of trying to cast from their own patterns. 227 page paperback full of photos, drawings and diagrams. Intermediate Technology Publications. Add to shopping basket

The Charcoal Foundry £ 6.70 • (G) First in the Dave Gingery series on making your own machine tools described in the Engineering section, this book explains the basics of pattern making and molding in very clear and simple language, plus gives instructions for making a simple charcoal fired furnace capable of melting brass and aluminium. Tremendous first book on foundrywork. Add to shopping basket

Li’l Bertha - A compact electric resistance Shop Furnace £ 7.80 • (G) Complete instructions on building this electric furnace from cheap, mainly scrap, materials. Use the result to heat treat metal, forge, temper, anneal etc as well as melt aluminium and bronze. Electricity is cleaner than charcoal and gas, if more expensive, and it is all there - in the wall! Also keeps the metal molten at a certain temperature until YOU are ready for IT. A great project with a useful end result. 67 page illustrated paperback written by Dave Gingery and published by Lindsay Publications. N.B. This is an American book, so remember to make appropriate alterations to the electrics. Add to shopping basket

Building A Gas Fired Crucible Furnace Gingery • £ 10.70 • (F) Here is the first description of a furnace YOU can build and use, which will easily melt cast iron - up to 20lbs. As always with Dave, the design is well thought out and clearly described, with appropriate drawings or illustrations. 108 pages. Paperback. Gingery. Satisfied customers confirm it works beautifully.....! The original furnace appears in Dave Gingery’s video featured earlier in this list. Add to shopping basket

Iron Melting Cupola Furnaces for the small foundry Chastain • £ 14.35 • (E) Until now the only furnace we have been able to offer that will melt cast iron has been Dave Gingery’s gas fired crucible furnace which, whilst a superb design of which a fair few have been made, only melts small amounts of cast iron. NOW you can melt much larger quantities, thanks to Steve Chastain who has written this brilliant book, highly recommended by Dave himself. The 10” diameter, 7’ high cupola Steve describes in detail here will melt 330 pounds of iron per hour in its standard version, or 660 pounds per hour in the supercharged (or blown) version! This is really a very good book; the design is explained clearly - as is the maths behind it, so you can vary the size if you want. This is information you won’t find anywhere else in such concise form, and if you build your own cupola, you can save a fortune on buying castings. I am not sure what your neighbours are going to say when you fire up this brute, but that is your problem. 124 page paperback, published by the author, with drawings, photos, tables and all you need to know. Add to shopping basket

Build an Oil-Fired Tilting Furnace Chastain • £ 14.35 • (E) This books contains complete plans, design criteria and operating instructions for an oil-fired crucible furnace that easily melts 100 lbs of aluminium an hour. It can also be fired with propane, diesel fuel or used motor oil. And thanks to the tilting mechanism, you will never have to handle a hot crucible again; this really is a very nifty design. Whilst Steve designed the furnace to melt aluminium. I can’t see any reason why it won’t melt cast iron if the burner is modified, and possibly the tilting mechanism beefed up. Certainly the basis of all the calculations needed to do this are included here - this is comprehensive information! 192 pages full of drawings, photos, charts etc. Paperback. Published by the author. Add to shopping basket

The Artful Bodger’s Iron Casting Waste Oil Furnace Peck • £14.95 • (E) Inspired by Dave and Vince Gingery, Colin Peck decided to build his own furnace, and can now melt aluminium to copper either directly in the furnace (tapped from a spout), or in a crucible. It can also melt around 60 lbs of cast iron in 2 hours, running on (free) waste oil - then he wrote the whole thing up as a book, and here it is. Like most of these projects, the dimensions aren't critical, and the major parts of Colin's furnace are based on a stainless steel beer barrel, and parts from an old 'Dyson' vacuum cleaner, so this really is a cheap project to both build and run - and, dammit, it is British. But whilst this design will knock the pants of every other furnace design around, it has to be said that Colin's forte is ideas, rather than writing; his enthusiasm is evident in his writing, and you can most certainly build the furnace from the drawings, photographs and description in this book, but you are going to have to use your grey-matter a bit more than you would with a Gingery book - and is that such a bad thing! Want a brilliant furnace for your home foundry? This is it. 84 ring-bound pages, with a good number of construction photos, and some drawings. Published by the author Add to shopping basket

How to Build the Wet/Dry Vac Precison Air Controller for Forge and Foundry Meador • £ 3.75 • (H) See main entry in the Blacksmithing section Add to shopping basket

Making Pistons for Experimental and Restoration Engines Chastain • £ 9.25 • (G) See main entry in Road and Agricultural Vehicles section - this is a great book telling everything you need to know to cast and machine new pistons for that wrecked IC engine. Add to shopping basket

Atmospheric Forge & Heat Treat Oven Goodman & Holmes • £11.35 • (G) See main entry in Engineering section - this forge will melt small quantities of metal - a ladle or so. Add to shopping basket

Making Crucibles Gingery • £ 7.50 • (H) We have sold hundreds, if not thousands, of books on making your own furnace so that you can melt metal, but all of these books assume you will purchase a crucible for use with the furnace. As most of these books were written by Dave Gingery it is logical that Dave’s son Vince has now written a book on making your own crucibles. Two methods are described - both depend on making molds, but differ as to how these are used. Either way looks straightforward, and a lot of fun - my guess is that the second method, which involves concrete molds and some ancillary presses, is probably the best if you melt a lot of metal, and need a lot of crucibles. Covers making the clay for the crucible, firing it etc, and making crucible tongs. Excellent instruction.117 photos and drawings. Paperback. David J. Gingery Publishing Add to shopping basket

Build a Muller Chastain • £12.25 • (G) Here Steve Chastain, author of a good number of the foundry books here, gives very detailed instructions for building a sand muller, or mixer - an indispensable piece of equipment for anyone seriously casting metal, as it makes light of mixing sand for molding boxes, or for cores. And the beauty of this is that the plans can be scaled up or down to make a small muller just for core sand, or a 42-inch one from a 500 gallon tank; everything you need to know is right here in this 96 page book, crammed with drawing, photos, tables and the like. Paperback. Published by the author. Add to shopping basket

How to Cast Small Metal and Rubber Parts Cannon • £ 8.99 • (F) Easy to follow book on making small metal parts by sand casting, and, perhaps better, how to cast rubber parts - something we have not found covered elsewhere.168 well illustrated pages. Paperback. TAB Books. Add to shopping basket

Ornamental Metal Casting Whitmoyer • £ 8.75 • (G) Super book on molding and casting unusual items such as plaques, sundials, figurines etc. Strong on lost wax casting and simple techniques of using Plaster of Paris to make incredibly detailed castings. Also details an enlarged version of Dave Gingery’s Charcoal Foundry. An excellent book, really loaded with photos and drawings. 92 pages. Paperback. Lindsay Pubs. Add to shopping basket

Lost Wax Casting Feinburg • £ 12.95 • (F) Given the interest in the subject it is surprising there are so few books on the techniques of Lost Wax Casting. In fact for years this has been the only one, and here it is. It is very good and we have sold 100s of copies, but intending purchasers should be aware that it was written to assist Aid workers in the Third World in setting up local craft industries. So us in the so called advanced countries may choose not to use cow dung as the clay binding agent, but take it from me that, as long as you make allowance for such instructions, this is a very sound book on the subject - as well as the only one (I think). 74 pages. Well illustrated with drawings and photos. Paperback. ITDG Add to shopping basket

Foundry Notes 1915-1925 • £ 5.50 • (H) This is an interesting mix of articles taken from Machinery Magazines. Two making the moulds for intricate IC engine castings at the works of Henry Wallwork & Co. in 1915, other cover pattern making for webbed and flanged wheels, moulding rope sheaves and so on. Other, probably less practical, articles cover aspects of centrifugal casting, and the machinery involved, plus an article on a 1925 induction heating furnace. 64 pages. 49 illustrations and drawings. paperback. Lindsay Publications Add to shopping basket

Practical Wood Patternmaking 1943 • Hall • £ 11.95 • (C) I’m delighted that Lindsay has reprinted this, as it is my type of book - lots of pictures and not many words. Seriously, this is a very good patternmaking book; it really does give you lessons in the art via practical examples, some of which may be useful in their own right. Early patternmaking books are great as they show how to make patterns not often seen today - IE for the items you and I want. This book also adds a more modern perspective to earlier books. Want a good first book on patternmaking? This is it! 188 page large format paperback groaning with illustrations and drawings. Add to shopping basket

Wood Pattern-Making McCaslin • £ 10.75 • (D) Here you get the secrets of good pattern making.This book comes is in parts: bench work and lathe work. In the first chapters you get basic information on precision woodworking, but then it gets really useful. You learn how to make patterns so that you can cast a surface plate, clamp, bracket, pedestal, bell-crank, toolrest, steady rest, tailstock, gear case, cylinder head, water jacket, piston, handwheel, flywheel and a host of other interesting shapes. As you go along you are shown how to make the necessary cores, and how to pour complex castings. You get dimensioned drawings, demonstrations of how a mold is rammed up, and much, much more. All heavily illustrated. The “How to Make Sections” are amongst the clearest I have seen. There are a fair few pattern-making books around. This is one of the best (otherwise we wouldn’t sell it). Buy a copy! 296 pages. Paperback. Lindsay Publications. Add to shopping basket

The Pattern Maker's Assistant 1889 • Rose • £ 12.75 • (D) Joshua Rose was one of those extraordinary Victorians who wrote huge quantities of engineering related books, all excellent. This one covers patternmaking and is as useful today as when it was first published. It covers preparation and use of tools, lathe, core, branch and sweep work, gear construction, shrinkage and a heck of a lot more, including 74 pages of useful tables! 331 pages. 250 illustrations. Paperback. Lindsay Publications Add to shopping basket

Metal Casting: A Sand Casting Manual for the Small Foundry Vol. 1 Chastain • £14.35 • (F) Add to shopping basket

Metal Casting: A Sand Casting Manual for the Small Foundry Vol. 2 Chastain • £14.35 • (F) Add to shopping basket Two excellent volumes from Steve Chastain whose two furnace books have sold very well, which give a good and very comprehensive introduction to casting skills. The main headings in Vol. 1 are: The Sand Casting Process, Foundry Projects (including a Match Plate Vibrator), Melting Equipment (including simple charcoal and gas furnaces), Temperature Measurement, Foundry Sands and Binders, and Coremaking. In Vol. 2 they are: Solidification of Metals, Aluminium Alloys, Copper Alloys, Brass & Bronze, Metallurgy of Iron, Gating Systems, Risers and Feeding of Castings, Pattern Making, Foundry Projects and Automotive Castings. What I like about these books is that they are focused on a generally low-tech approach applicable to anyone melting metal at home, unlike other otherwise excellent books we sell, essentially on the same subject, which are aimed much more at the professional founder. These volumes cover the ground well and are written in a way even I can understand - it’s good. 206 & 192 pages respectively. Paperbacks full of photos, drawings tables and other helpful information. Published by the author.

Brass and Alloy Founding 1934 • £ 5.50 • (G) For years we sold one of Lindsay’s pamphlets called “Brass Founding”; now Lindsay has reprinted the book from which this was extracted and here it is. This was part of a correspondence course so the information in it is clear and to the point with Part 1 broadly covering the metals and alloys, whilst Part 2 is largely on (commercial) furnaces. 108 well illustrated pages - a lot of book (and information) for the money! Paperback Lindsay Publications. Add to shopping basket

Metalcasting Ammen • £ 27.99 • (A) Reworked printing of The Metalcaster’s Bible, this is “A complete and practical guide to metalcasting”, and contains virtually all the information you would need to successfully cast metal. Really an encyclopedia on the subject. As far as I can see, other than in larger format (and hence clarity), there are no major changes from the original printing. 434 well illustrated paperback pages. TAB Books. Add to shopping basket

FILMS!

Greensand Casting Techniques from David Gingery’s Workshop • 45 mins • DVD £ 19.95 Add to shopping basket

Advanced Green Sand Moulding with John Dilsaver • 45 mins • DVD £ 19.95 Add to shopping basket Two good semi-professional films for those of you interested in doing your own casting. In the first, noted author Dave Gingery goes through the basics of green sand moulding - the sand mix, tools required etc and then gives a practical demonstration of the art, moulding and pouring a casting for a flywheel. You also see his famous gas fired crucible furnace, and some of the workshop equipment and models featured in his books. The second film, with Dave’s pupil John Dilsaver, deals with how to do the moulds for awkward items and covers complex shapes, book moulds, greensand cores, matchplate patterns etc. This film is only about moulding - if you want the information on tools, sand mixes etc, you need the first one.