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Green sand casting is a casting method where you make a part then use a sand-clay mixture to make a mold of that part. The part is then removed from the mold and the mold is used to cast the desired material, in this case aluminum. I wanted a part out of aluminum on my guitar to stop it from going out of tune as fast but still allow for the whammy bar to be used. So I designed a part and carved it out of some balsa wood. I used the green sand mixture in 2 halves to mold the part. I added some gates to let the aluminum in and out at the high parts. I set that asside and built the absolute jankiest hole in the ground forge you have ever seen. I had a steel crucible out of some pipe fittings and ran a tube to the bottom of the hole to connect a shop vac to. I then filled the hole with charcoal and the crucible. I had some aluminum from cans and a rain gutter. I fired it up and started melting everything down. Occasionally I would add some borax flux and remove the draught. Once everything was hot and I thought I had enough aluminum I brought the casting over. Not sure how it was done, but somehow I got the crucible out and filled up the mold. It didn't turn out great but it did do what I wanted it to. There was a little post-processing done on it to get final finish a bit better. I drilled some holes and tried to file it down a bit. It was mostly to fit it cleanly into the back of my guitar without interfering with the whammy bar. Really I should have added better gating because as you will see there are a lot of voids on the part.

email: va.web.code@gmail.com https://github.com/va-code https://www.youtube.com/@vaughnanderson7984