Thread: Donvale Casting and Stabilising Day

More photos, more photos.

It was a lovely Melbourne day, neither too hot nor too cold, and spent in the company of some great people and I learned a lot about casting. Now at least I know how it's done.

Neil came early to set up and I'm amazed at what he can cramp into his trailer, a veritable turning and casting shop on wheels. Unfortunately Scott couldn't make it as they spent the night and day with his young daughter who was taken to hospital last night. Glad she is okay and maybe we can finally catch up another time.

After some demos we adjourned for lunch and finally went back and saw the results of the castings. Thanks Neil and Mark for the demos.

Here are the photos I took, being random shots taken during the day.

Some early shots

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The cooks at work.

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Lunch

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In the workshop.

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Afternoon demos.


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All in all a lovely day, I'm sure they all have had a great time.

Peter.

Yep, twas a great day

I got there early to set up and get the private tour of Sturdee's sheds, yes sheds plural, there are quite a few. When forumites started to arrive we decided to start with coffee and morning tea whilst waiting for the others to arrive. Afterwards I started on the castings demos.

After the usual introduction to casting explanation of the pressure vessels and different forms of molds we cast up some pen blanks. We started with some of Fly's Rose Sheoak pods cast in a number of individual blank molds, plus some Myrtle Burl offcuts that TreeCycle brought placed in more slab molds for excess resin. We decided on bleeding pod blanks, ie the seed pods mixed in red resin until partially set, then placed in molds with fluro yellow resin under pressure to set. We had enough excess fluro yellow resin for one of the 3 pen block casts with the burl offcuts, I also scraped some leftover red resin, that was gelled but not hard, and placed it into the molds.

Next was lunch, yum as usual, especially the deserts

Then Mark took over the demonstrating of the Cactus Juice system of stabilizing. I was very impressed with the cylinder type vacuum chambers he had, especially since they come in different lengths, to suit pen blanks right up to large pepper grinder type blanks. Whilst he was going through an actual demonstration of stabilizing some blanks with blue dyed Cactus Juice, I got stuck into castings some Cypress Pine seed pods I scored yesterday into a small pepper grinder blank, from translucent emerald green resin with gold fleck. The excess resin was then used to cast some more burl offcuts, even some leftover red sheoak pods plus some more cypress pods to fill the mild.

Mark then started cooking the stabilized blanks and started on another batch of blanks in clear Cactus Juice. Afternoon tea rolled on whilst things were cooking and being pressurized, we had 4 pots going, even a few spare. Whilst the second lot of stabilized blanks were cooking, we sliced up a few of the cast blanks. The very first blanks cast were fine, because we had post cured them in Mark's oven, but the later sets I had done were not quite set enough.
As I was packing up I realised the pepper grinder blank I had cast and placed in a pot, didn't actually have the pressure turned on to the pot . Hopefully it will still work out Ok, it will be more prone to cracking and the odd pod piece flying lose whilst turning.

All the cast and stabilized blanks were shared around, plus some green Bluegum turning blanks I brought (I still have some for DJ & Scott that didn't make it), and some burl offcuts Mark brought along. The only cast I took home was the small pepper grinder blank, 70x70x250 that used ~1 litre of resin that I stripped when I got home from the mold photographed.

Hopefully the attendees can photograph some of the casts & stabilised blanks they took home, even some turned into pens, and I will try to turn the small pepper grinder blank into something (not necessarily a pepper grinder ).

Thanks to Amos for helping to organise, and Peter for hosting the event

Cheers

Must reiterate what Amos has said. A big thank you to Sturdee and his wife for opening up their home for us to invade, and for providing the salads for lunch, and Neil for the meat
I had a very enjoyable time meeting up with some of the forum members I only knew by their assumed names, and I learned a lot about casting and stabilizing from Neil and Mark. Thanks to you guys for making everything look so easy. I will certainly be having a go at casting in the near future.
Again, thank you to everyone involved in the organizing.

Also a big thank you from me to Sturdee and Mrs Sturdee for their hospitality.

Thanks to Neil and Mark for a very educational day, and to all attending for some great company.

Even though I have been casting for some time, you can always learn more from how other people do it.

Here are some more photos.............

...........and some more

Thanks all for the pics and Sturdee and Mrs Sturdee even tho I wasn't there. This must have been a great event will have to come back and read more.

Looks like a good day was had by all, had to finish up a job so missed out, but I'm sure I can get Neil to give me a private demo

Wow boys I bet it was a awesome day D looks like all had fun D

Ian

I know I had fun and I must say A big thank you to Sturdee and his wife for opening up their home and his sheds for all us hords.

I did love niels accuracy (which can't be beat ..!) and with a great bunch of blokes it was a great day..

thanks again guys for letting us play (two thumbs up )

Thank you to all that came yesterday and contributed in your own way to making the day a great success. It was a pleasure to be able to step in and help Neil with his demos and saying goodbye for another year to us.

Thank you also to the messages of thanks to us, I've passed them on to my lovely wife, much appreciated.

The clean up went very smoothly and quickly. All I had to do was drive the cars back into the garage, remember I use it for the purpose it was built , move the spare compressor back into it's own parking spot in the metal working shed, take apart the extra bbq table and put that and the extra chairs away, empty and switch of the urn and the bbq fridge. All in all 15 minutes work.

So it's all back to normal and apart of the great memories we have a some timber and a few of the casting blanks to play with to remind me of a great day.

Here are the photos of the blanks I got both taken of the same but different sides.

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I'll leave it to the experts to describe them and the process used.

Peter.

Glad to hear we didn't leave too much of a mess behind. Looks like everyone had a great, informative day, and all got home safely.

looks like a great day was had by all, if only it was a month down the track i might have made it down as well, Christmas seems to throw so many spanners in the mix it should have been called Murphies

the tucker looks pretty damn tasty as well

MIK