we have aluminum!

 We poured metal on Friday and anxiously awaited Saturday when we could bust open the mold and see what we got. We had no clue what to expect. Since it was such a large mold, we could only keep our fingers crossed that we wouldn't run out of aluminum... the biggest crucible can only hold 80 pounds! There were fears of air bubbles, leaks, and shrinkage, all of which occurred, but only on a minimal scale. We're hoping it's nothing we can't fix.

 Once we got all the sand cleaned off, we had to "chase" the "flashing." Which just means we had to chisel off all of the extra stuff. There's a little foundry vocab for you!  This has been such an interesting process for me. I took a foundry class last spring, but due to a malfunctioning furnace and kiln, never got to do many pours. This project is giving me the chance to learn metal casting in a much more hands-on way, which, despite the hours upon hours of tedious technical stuff, has proven to be quite an exciting learning process.