Building an Aligator

[f350ca]

This is making me feel old, been about 40 years since I poured a babbitt bearing in the steel mills.
Made up a make shift furnace out of fire brick to heat the ladle using a 200,000 but propane torch.
The photo isn't staged, no idea why the flame doesn't show.


The last time I did one we used an oil based putty to dam the cap, but thought we'd try high temp silicone, worked like a charm.
Blackened the shaft with soot off the acetylene torch and preheated the caps.



Had to over fill the caps as the boat isn't sitting flat.



Then had to scrape that flat to get back down to the cast so I could shim the top cap high, then pour it.



The first two pours went smooth using the old babbitt we melted out of the housings. Used a pine stick as a temperature gauge, when it browns in the molten metal its good to pour. Had a hand held infrared thermometer as a backup, it read about 650. Ran out of that and used new ingots Bill had, as seen in the pot, don't know what alloy they were, but the stick was black when they melted and the thermometer was off scale. Wouldn't flow in the cap and was harder than hell, had to melt it out and use scrappings someone gave us for the top caps. Unbelievable amount of slag when we melted them but got a good pour.
Of course had to have a snack of hot dogs roasted over the torch.