As I was cleaning up over the weekend, I realized that I had an excessive amount of aluminum scraps lying around. These needed to be consolidated into conveniently stackable ingots. Out came the charcoal.....
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| Loaded with charcoal and ready to light.... |
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| bye bye piston... |
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| cover and let simmer for about 40 minutes... |
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| liquid hot magma... |
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| once cool, convenient stackable ingots ready for use. |
Once most of the random pieces were melted, I wanted to experiment with aluminum cans. I have read on many websites that cans are more of a pain than they are worth but still, I had to find out for myself.
Because an aluminum can has so much surface area compared to the quantity of aluminum it possesses, much of the usable aluminum reacts with the atmosphere and creates aluminum oxide. However, once you have a puddle of molten aluminum that you can entirely submerge the can into, there is much less wasted. The picture below is what is left of 100 16oz cans. On the left is the aluminum oxide and the ash leftover from the paint. There is as much of that as there is melted aluminum. I wasn't using any type of flux, so I am sure that I could have gotten a bit more.
