Let me start by saying I'm new to this forum. I have been casting aluminum and brass for about a year now.I like most people don't ask questions tell somthing goes wrong, and today it went wrong big time.I just started machining thing and wanted to make a permanent mold cuz I hate playing in sand all day, so naturally not wanting to buy a huge block of iron I decided I would cast my own. How hard could it be? Right! Wrong very wrong. I have an LP furnace made out of a propane tanks and plaster.I have a blow dryer Jamed on the back too but I never realy use it. So anyways I got a cast iron water pipe from the junkyard it was really rusty i don't know if that matters or not. I thin smashed it with Thor's hammer into pieces threw a more than have of them in the crucible ,and let-er ripp. I'm bringing the temperature up slowly its a graphite crucible its getting hotter and nothing happens . I turn it up more and turn the the blower on low for an hour. Everything in the furnace is glowing orange red now but no meltie. Ok full gas full blower I'm I'm done skrewing around out here im jumping in full dangle! 30 mins later everything is yellow glowing.Its so hot I can only look in for a second b4 it burns my face I threw 30 more mins nothing still I threw an aluminum inget in it makes the iron more bendy now but an hr later still nothing hot as xxxx glowing yellow but still nothing. I get my dross stick and start poking around.Its made of conduit. The iron is bendy enough for me to push it off the walls of the crucible. I pushed down in the middle and started to stur it up success its a flued, thin flash heat fire and sparks fly up. I jump back. I don't know what just happened but it looks like it's gona work now. A good 4 inches of my dross stick melted that's weird but it's gona work looks like. I cover up the glory hole to let the last little crumbs melt,go inside get something to drink etc. But as soon as I walked back to the shack the I get hit with the strongest smell I ever smelled in the history of smelling. It almost knocked me out and i wasn't even in the shack I was next to it.Xxxx is that from? I went back inside to get my charcoal filter mask put it on and decided I should end this little experiment now and dump out the crucible. Blower off, gas off, top off furnace ,crucible out crucible pouring just that quick. But no pouring was to be seen.It somehow turned back into a solid in the blink of an eye. How is that even possible I tried to poke it with the end of a knife and the knife rolled over from the heat what happened? I'm so lost rite now. Does anyone know what happened here? I'm going to attach the pictures of this catastrophe below. Ruined crucible is pick #1. Pic 2 is a piece of the cast iron I didn't try to melt. Pickle 3 is my ruined knife and pic 4 is my furnace and homles man shack where I ruin knifes and crucibles I guess.
