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	[Parent Directory]	-	Sat May 23 11:18:18 2009
	Rev War Era Coins Arrived Today	-	Wed Jul 29 19:08:33 2009
	Yeah! The I ordered online arrived today. All I need now is more plaster. For those that don’t know my ultimate goal with the coin casting, I’m trying to create some souvenirs to give to a few people at the Rev War events our group does (who doesn’t like coins?). Given that each of the coins you can buy online costs about $1 - $2 each (plus shipping and handling), you really can’t afford to give them away for long. BUT, if you made them yourself, all it would cost you is the time you spent making and cleaning the coins plus the cost of the pewter. Besides this is an interesting project than may lead to casting of more useful things in more durable metals. Eventually, I hope to make a verity of coins that I either designed myself or cast from real coins that I own, but for the moment I’ll work with the few coins that I have on hand. Filed under: Coin, Pewter Casting. No comments.
	Schedule Break	-	Sun Jul 19 08:53:10 2009
	Finally, the near back-to-back Dragoon events are at an end and I can finally get some time start work on some other projects. Filed under: Uncategorized. No comments.
	230th Anniversary of The Battle of Norwalk Event	-	Wed Jul 15 21:02:03 2009
	Brits taunting the crowd as "Norwalk" burns. Thankfully there was not much rain at this event, though quite a few people did pick up an leave after the rain on Saturday night. The 2nd Dragoons had a big part in help planning this even, so in some ways, this was a “home game” for us, so we had to make sure everything went right. Kudos to our own Eric Chandler for his part in arranging this event. Better pics and an article about the event can be found here. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Mount Washington Resort Event	-	Tue Jul 07 20:37:51 2009
	Picture of the mounted group in the hotel carport. I'm on the far left. This was my first event on Orion, and to say I was a bit nervous is a bit of an understatement. Orion has major has some issues as of the result of his previous owner and to say he does not trust people now is a bit of an understatement. We’ve worked together a few times before, but he’s a long way from trusting me like Beau does. Between the rain, the cannon fire from the UTA guys, and the crowds of people so close, I’d say he did amazingly well. Eric gives final instructions for the trooping of the colors before the formal dinner on the second night As for the actual event itself, it went as well could be expected to the near constant rain the entire weekend. It was a good thing that we were used to doing programs indoors or outdoors, so we were flexible. Cath in front of the Mount Washington Resort Hotel. The resort staff was first rate and treated us EXTREMELY well. This was one event I’m going to look forward to doing next year. Hopefully the weather will cooperate a bit better next time. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Coin Casting - First Attempt	-
	Done with the first pour - using only gloves was not smart. I finally got a chance to pour some pewter today in a coin mold that I made a while ago (using various 20th century coins), and I have to say that the results were mixed. The impressions on the coins turned out to be better than expected for using plaster and having the graphite pool over the tops of the coins for some reason. I had thought that the mold was a total loss, but decided to use it anyway to figure out how large the sprue and vent channels needed to be. Besides, I needed to practice pouring anyway, and if the casting was a disaster or the mold broke, I was not expecting much anyway. It turns out that the results were better than expected. The mold worked OK, but after 10 pours there were noticeable cracks on both sides of the mold that followed the sprue channels. I’m not sure why that happened but internal supports, such as chicken wire mesh, might resolve that issue next time. Later, when the mold cooled, the cracks shrank to being almost unnoticeable. The first pour was a near disaster, as I seriously underestimated the viscosity of the molten pewter (it pours like water!) and the internal volume of the mold. The result was an overflow that was caught by the cast iron pan I had the mold sitting in (I kinda expected something like this to happen). The rest of the pours were without incident. Partial result of all that work after cleaning. As for the coins themselves, most of the mold details were faithfully reproduced from the first pour to the last. Repeated pouring and removing the metal did not cause nearly as much wear on the plaster as I expected. I wish the detail on the front side of the coins was better, but that was a result of an issue when making the second half of the mold. My only real complaint about the coins is the amount of flashing that needed to be removed afterwords due to my sprue and vent channels being larger than what was actually required. Pewter is soft, but even soft metals take time clean up with wire cutters and a file. Voids are also a bit of an issue, but I think that has more to do with pouring temperature and speed. With more practice, I think I can do better. Filed under: Coin, Pewter Casting. No comments.