An early start to the morning, but I just couldnt wait to finish the aluminum foundry that I will use to make cast aluminum. Today I put on the last layer of my secret sauce; perlite mortar. Now it needs to sit for a few weeks and dry completely before I add charcoal and fire it up. If there is too much moisture in the concrete it will probably create steam and crack when fired upp to around 500 degrees or more (900 fahrenheit).

For the first outer layer I used chicken wire filled with cement, sand and leca balls (expanded clay balls). On top of that there's a skin of 1 part cement to 3 parts perlite. The surface will endure raging heat, and normal silica sand would melt into glass or expand and crack, destroying my beautiful work. There are special firepoof mortar that you can buy, but since my wife has me on an extremely tight budget, regular portland cement had to suffice =)

The furnace is a lot larger than the pic foretells, and heavy. I would estimate almost 25kg. But go big or go home, right?