21:23 The Swainson's Thrush is still chatting at this late hour. They are closing the place down it appears. Outlasting even the Robbins. I love their last call song. It's a beautiful thing. it's an honor to bear witness to this little bird closing symphony. Well, we melted more metal today. Yielded about 25 pigs in total. Not bad. The pigs were pouring nicely. the metal looks smooth, clean, not too shiny. Also today I reassembled the Partlow on the material maker. The bracket for the assembly needed to be welded, which was accomplished last year, but the machine has sat dormant. Good news: we managed to get the thing back together and tested the crucible. Within 45 minutes, we had what we call "Type Soup" (molten type alloy. ready for casting - about 575 degrees) the temperature was consistent. It works! Bad News: during the testing process, we discovered another damaged/broken part. It's a cast iron "standard" used to properly align the pot, nozzle and mold. It's a clean break, so a good braze should fix it, but getting someone out here may be the tricky part. One step forward, one step back. If this craft was easy, it wouldn't be special, eh? -fiddleink
Monotype Material Maker back in action. Kind of.
Type Soup.
Broken Standard. Bummer.