I was originally thinking I'd have to do all the handles, but even close up they look almost identical. The polished aluminum, to my surprise, came out a bit darker than the chrome plated handles. I thought about using zinc vs. aluminum but melting and pouring aluminum is a lot easier and I had lots of beer cans and scrap around.
If I were to do it again, I'd go hunt down some green sand, busting up the fine sand and glue mix was tough and because it left a rougher finish, it meant more clean up work. Which is why I coated the old handle before making the plug mold.
I've done casting before but not at home, I worked in a shop that did a lot of custom automotive machine work, we did mostly one of restorations on some oddball engines so making parts was pretty common. They had fairly large forge and all the tools needed on hand. Pistons were the most common part we ended up making, but we also did a few custom cast cam shafts for a few small engines. I worked there in high school many years ago, they closed up around the time I left, I had tried my best to hunt down and buy the equipment after they closed but it got scattered. All I was able to find as the align bore set up and one milling machine. I wanted the forge and the huge pressure blaster they had there but they got sold at auction to an unknown buyer. I only found a similar bead blaster about a month ago, its not quite a large but its close.
The forge was large enough to melt down several hundred pounds of metal at a time, enough to pour just about any engine block or automotive casting.
My favorite was remaking cylinder heads and intakes. I did more than my share of experimenting back then on my own car. I always wondered if any future owners ever figured out what some of the parts were or where they came from.
My biggest concern at home is fire, I did those handles on a day when the ground was snow covered, which meant it took more heat to keep the aluminum melted but there wasn't any chance of setting the grass or leaves on fire.
A buddy does some small sand casting in his basement, but he's doing things no bigger than jewellery and trinkets and none of the benches in his basement are wood.
Its also a smoky mess and I don't care to breath in any of that smoke or metal particulates.
I did most of the finishing on a belt sander and flap wheel, then on a huge buffer. I routed out a piece of wood to hold the handle so I could get a straight smooth edge on each side. The top and bottom edges of the handles are parallel so that part was easy.
I thought about buffing the chrome off all the original handles just to make them all the same, I buffed a few and went through the chrome a bit where the handles were pitted.
The bottom three in the pic are those with this issue and they appear a tad bit lighter in color. It would have been easier to just go buy some drawer pulls at the hardware store that fit but they only had the rounded type and none of the screw spacing measurements were exact. Besides, I've been tossing the idea around on how to make use of scrap aluminum at home for a while anyhow. I've been melting it down and just pouring it into long bars for machining. I just took some chromoly tubing I had and capped off one end, when the aluminum cools, it shrinks and slides right out in a near perfect bar.
