with lots of new members on the forum now , and most if not all ? , interested in recycling . I thought it would be a good idea to say what I do with my waste aluminium .
A few years back I saw , on the internet , a site about melting ali with nothing more than a couple of tin cans and a hairdyer , along with a few hands full of charcoal. I was very doubtful of the claim that it would melt anything let alone ali. Anyway I got a couple of tin cans ,soup tin size , and a couple of the larger big , dog food , tins. Poked a few holes here and there , got some charcoal from one of those disposable BBQ's and not having a hair dryer I used a hot air paint stripper . I put some charcoal in one of the big tins and then a soup tin inside that . I set the paint stripper up to blow air in the large tin , lit the charcoal , filled the soup tin with ali foil pie cases and some cut up chunks of old caravan strip ali , and less than five minutes later I was pouring melted ali in an old sweet tin lid . This was the first ali ingot I made from waste . It popped out of the lid , when cold , and I still have that one now. I have made many many more since then , most of which I have sold to the scrapman. I am going to set up a much larger , more permanent furnace , to melt much bigger quantities of ali , to use in making a lathe . The charcoal I will use for this will be made by me from wood grown on my own land and any waste wood I can get hold of. This is about as eco friendly as I can get , and it will make all sorts of useful items that I can't afford to buy. I will be able to melt down old ali lawn mower engines and such , and turn them into some tool that will get used for years, and then in turn go in the melting pot at the end of its day. My setup will use an old blacksmiths hand cranked air blower , so I won't even be using electricity to supply air.
It just goes to show what you can do with a waste product rather than throw it in the bin .
here are the websites that first started me on this subject:
http://www.gizmology.net/furnace.htmhttp://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index.htmlhttp://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.htmlcheers
Russ