[TheForge] RE: Casting; to be or not to be...

[James Binnion]

Bruce,

What happened to Paw Paw Wilson was horrible but if I remember  
correctly he already had lung problems from smoking. He might have  
survived the massive zinc fume exposure if his system had not already  
been compromised. But even if my memory is faulty on that count I can  
tell you from doing a fair amount of casting of zinc containing  
alloys that you do not get the kind of fumes that he generated by  
deliberately burning off all that galvanizing from those pipe  
sections. He set up a worst case senario and unfortunately paid the  
ultimate price. I would also agree that you want to avoid high zinc  
alloys when casting as the fumes are there and it is never good to  
breathe metal fumes of any kind and silicon bronze is so nice to work  
with that I can see no good reason to cast the brasses. And remember  
if you are melting aluminum that many aluminum alloys contain zinc  
and since you do not have a temperature controlled furnace you can  
vaporize the zinc out of your aluminum melt if it is over heated.

The bottom line is that casting is a dangerous process just like  
blacksmithing. Learn the safety requirements and follow them and you  
can have lots of fun.

Jim

On Aug 2, 2006, at 12:37 PM, Bruce Freeman wrote:

> Ask the late Paw Paw Wilson how dangerous "brass fumes' (i.e., zinc
> fumes) are:  http://www.anvilfire.com/iForge/
> He was exposed in an indoors environment.  Outdoors would help a lot,
> but the key is not to breathe the stuff.
>
> Pickle an ingot in acid (or put a drop of acid on the ingot).  If the
> color changes from "gold" to copper, then it's probably zinc - you've
> etched the zinc out of the surface.
>
> Bruce
> NJ

James Binnion
jbin at well.com