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

[Washington, Aubrey O.]

I'll forward these cautions on to my son.  And, we'll build safety precautions into our procedures.
 
Aubrey

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From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net on behalf of James Binnion
Sent: Thu 8/3/2006 11:01 AM
To: Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] RE: Casting; to be or not to be...



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



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