Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it. Indeed, I did a lot of research on home foundry setups and tool building before I started this project, and I am deliberately going slowly and carefully.
One question—I thought aluminum was really reactive with oxygen, and normally ever piece of it we see is coated with a thin film of the oxide. Does this present any special issues when heating it up to melt it?
> Twenty minutes later I have melted enough sprues and ingots that the
> crucible is almost completely full. I take the lid off, skim the dross — the
> bits of aluminum oxide and impurities that float — off the top and put it
> in the ingot tray to cool; this will be trash. (Trying to recover aluminum
> from aluminum oxide is not really worth it when aluminum is so plentiful.)Whether oxidation or reduction is taking place during the melting process is determined by the amount of oxygen arriving via the air blast; too much oxygen and you get a hot oxidizing atmosphere, which oxidizes both my iron crucible and the top of the melt. Too little oxygen and you can actually get a reducing atmosphere, the furnace runs a bit colder, less heat escapes through the flue. So it's a tricky balance to strike and I'm still fine-tuning it.
I add potassium chloride and sodium carbonate to flux the melt and remove dissolved hydrogen; the KCl helps keep more aluminum oxide from forming apparently, though some home foundry sites report that they don't see a difference if they skip that step. Both chemicals are cheap, so I'm not too concerned.
The chemical composition of the oxide [0] is the same as the lenses on iPhone cameras, the so-called 'sapphire.'