Foundry Life

Primer for this blog

• Copper is a natural element.
• An alloy is a mixture of two or more metallic elements.
• Bronze is an alloy whose primary element is copper.
• There are over 400 different alloys that qualify as bronze.

Now, our story:

In 1996 Desert Crucible cast a monumental sculpture titled “Exchange at the Presidio”, which the Mormon Battalion Monument Committee donated to the City of Tucson. It is a depiction of an unusual event that occurred in 1846 during the Mexican-American war. The US Mormon Battalion was on an arduous trek from Council Bluffs, Iowa, on its way to San Diego (at that time a part of Mexico), to reinforce US troops.

The walled pueblo of Tucson was under the protection of a Mexican garrison. The Mormon battalion was in rough shape from the journey, and badly in need of supplies.

Rather than what could have been expected to take place (a clash between the two military groups whose countries were at war), a remarkable temporary rapprochement ensued. The Battalion entered Tucson, and a critically essential bartering took place where European cloth from the officers uniforms were exchanged for vital supplies. There were no hostilities, and the Battalion continued on to San Diego.

The sculpture, standing nineteen feet tall and weighing about two tons, depicts an officer and an enlisted man from the Battalion exchanging goods with a Tucson merchant.

The sculpture was cast in many separate pieces, most of them weighing less than 100 pounds, and welded together.

Finally, the point of our story.

When casting and assembling (welding) the individual pieces of a monument, it is essential that each piece, as well as the welding rod used in their assembly, be of the exact same metal alloy. Different alloys weather differently, and over time, if different alloys are used, the welding seams and the different pieces will begin to look like a metallic patchwork quilt rather than a single, monolithic structure.

Our alloy of choice, chosen for a variety of technical considerations, was Silicon Bronze, or 95-4-1. It is a composition of 95% copper, 4% silica, and 1% other trace elements.

During the production of this sculpture, the Committee received a very generous in-kind donation from the copper producer ASARCO. It was delivered to the door at the foundry. It was a copper cathode (one of those thick copper plates you sometimes see stacked end to end being transported on a railroad flatbed), about 36 x 36 x 1/2” in dimension, and about 275 pounds in weight.

We were thus presented with a dilemma. We had no way to alloy such a large chunk of pure copper into silicon bronze. Our only option was to take the donated anode to a metal scrap dealer, sell it, and use the proceeds to purchase from our regular supplier the silicon bronze ingot we needed.

This we did.

A couple of weeks later, here come ‘da fuzz – two dudes in suits with official credentials ready to arrest whoever stole the anode and sold it to the scrap dealer. The check from the dealer had been made out to Desert Crucible. Wait a minute. Nobody stole anything. That anode was a donation. Papers? No, no papers. It just showed up at the door. Yeah, right. It took a while, but we finally got it all straightened out. One more episode in our finding our way through the inevitable bureaucracy of the day.

A few years before Desert Crucible began operations, Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Act. This law obligates employers to identify and rectify safety and health problems that might exist in their workspaces.

In the early years of this act the foundry industry was specifically under scrutiny. Although we found the requirements of OSHA to be somewhat onerous for a small business, particularly the record keeping, we supported its overall objective of safety in the workplace, and made every effort to keep current on, and to comply with, the regulations.

As a part of the regulations, OSHA inspectors were allowed to visit a work site, without prior notice, to examine, at a minimum, the required record keeping of the business. Failure to allow this examination could result in OSHA inspectors returning, with legal authorization, for a full-blown inspection of the business operations.

Needless to say, we kept up with the records requirements, and allowed inspection whenever they showed up — usually about once a year. We were always complemented for our cooperation and good record keeping.

You can only imagine our surprise the day they showed up, unannounced, with a full-blown inspection team, and the legal authorization for them to conduct an unencumbered inspection, to look specifically into fourteen alleged safety violations filed against us by an anonymous (by statute) person, and for whatever other violations they might find.

Not a banner day.

Before we allowed the inspectors into the shop we assembled our employees, and I instructed them something like this: “Today OSHA employees are here to inspect our operations. We remind you that they are here only to look for anything that might violate a safety regulation and present a threat to your health or safety, which we will then be required to correct. We ask you to cooperate fully with the inspectors and to honestly answer any questions they may pose to you. We also request that you not volunteer any information that is not requested. If you have something you want to bring up, please do so at our next staff meeting. Go about your work today as assigned, stop when requested to answer any questions, and resume working once you have answered. Be respectful at all times. Neither Tom, nor Theora, nor I will be permitted to accompany the inspectors.”

At the end of the day the inspectors thanked us for our cooperation, advised us that their report would be completed in about a week, and that we would receive a copy of the report along with instructions on what we were to do next.

The following week the report arrived in the mail, absolving us of each and every one of the fourteen complaints leveled against us by the anonymous complainer. The complaints were bogus!

However, during the inspection two minor violations were found. One was a damaged ground plug on an electric forklift, and the other dealt with inadequate railing in an overhead storage area.

At a subsequent hearing we were assessed a fine for the two violations.

My respect for OSHA was diminished by this experience. I argued at the hearing in which the fine was assessed:

1. It would have been fairer and more efficient for us to have been advised of the fourteen alleged violations ahead of time, and then been given time to either fix them or dispute them.
2. Keeping the complainee’s name anonymous opens the door for untrue and unfair crank complaints to be made, as we just experienced.
3. We would not have been subjected to the fine had the bogus anonymous complaint not been filed. We should have been allowed to fix the problems without fine.

Complaint denied.

I haven’t kept up since we closed the foundry, but I have heard the regulations have been changed to address these issues. I guess we weren’t the only ones to complain.

Illigitimi non carborundum.

            It was our practice when a customer came in asking us to quote a price on molding and/or casting into bronze a particular sculpture, we would take the original into our make-shift photo studio to photograph it and to take measurements and make notes about it. (This was prior to digital photography – we took photos with a single lens reflex camera, and developed photos from the negatives.) The photos and measurements and notes, along with our quote, were retained in the customer’s file.

          One day a customer came in with his clay model of a fairly elaborate sculpture of a native American paddling a birchbark canoe, filled with animal skins, through a rapid. It was about thirty inches in length, well rendered and depicted good action.

          We provided him with a price quote and he said he would bring it back later, because he had some “small detailing” yet to do on it.

          He brought it back in about six months later, and said he was ready for us to proceed. I gave him a price for our doing so, whereupon he expressed dismay that the price was higher than he had expected, and presented a copy of our previous quote.

          “But this is a different piece than we quoted before,” I said.

          “Oh, no …it’s exactly the same sculpture. I just added some detail into his robe.”

          I retrieved his file and showed him the photos of the original piece. The original canoe was about five inches shorter, and contained only one man, not two. He studied the photos and replied, “Damn! You SOB’s keep good records.”

One of the things that becomes readily apparent if you are a new, or small, or both, business is that you are an automatic target for scammers – from the “Nigerian Prince” to “No-risk trial” and everything in between. I was always proud of our staff at Desert Crucible in their judicious but firm handling of these matters.

Consider:

• Our sweet but savvy Receptionist fielded this telephone call:
  
  “Hi! This is Fred from Ben’s Mechanical Repair. I was at your shop last week and we ordered a replacement motor for your sandblaster. The motor just came in, but I have misplaced the Work Order. I need your OK to invoice this out so I can drop by and deliver it.”
  
  “Can you tell me who placed the order?”
  
  “Oh,… I forget his name. You know….It was the guy in charge of the machines – the sweaty guy in the back.”
  
  “That would be me.”
  
  Click……..    Bzzzzzzzz.

• Another scam was the scammer would assemble a reasonable-appearing order for cleaning supplies – plastic buckets, brushes, cleanser, etc.—usually under about $50 worth of stuff, and leave it at the front door with a listing of what was included (but with no indication who the vendor was), and without having anyone sign for it. A few weeks later an invoice for the items would arrive in the mail, along with a statement (no telephone number or email address on either document), and a return payment envelope.
  
  Of course the scammer’s gamble was that this statement was for a small amount of money and would just be placed in the pile of bills to be paid and would go through unnoticed.
  
  We would instead send a note in the return envelope (no check) indicating that we had not placed the order and we did not want the items, and they had left us with no information to contact them, but that we had kept the order intact in the box they delivered it in, and it was kind of in the way, and we would appreciate their picking it up right away.
  
  No one ever showed up.
  
  This scenario occurred several times, with different items. It finally stopped after we included this note in the return pay envelope (always to a different address than before):
  
  “We did not order these items, and are thus not required, under law, to pay for them. We have donated them to the Casa de los Ninos children’s crisis nursery on your behalf. You may want to declare them as a charitable donation on your tax return.”

• Another one:
  
  “Hi, this is Kendall from (mumble) Office supply. Could you please grab a quick look at your copy machine and give me that model number?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “No? Why not?”
  
  “Because then you will send me paper and toner that I haven’t ordered and don’t need, and follow up the delivery with an invoice that I won’t pay. Neither of us wants that hassle.”
  
  Click……..    Bzzzzzzzz.

Creation of the ceramic shell that surrounds the wax in lost-wax casting involves the mixing of colloidal silica (powdered silica suspended in distilled water) with fine silica sand to produce a slurry into which the wax pattern is dipped. Dry silica sand is then dusted onto the wet surface and the assembly is allowed to dry.

This process is repeated several times until a coating is built up around the wax pattern. When the desired thickness is reached, the assembly is placed into a “burn-out furnace”, where two things occur: The wax pattern melts and runs out of the shell, and the heat “vitrifies” the silica assembly into a fused, hard ceramic shell.

It is into this ceramic shell that the molten metal is poured to produce the desired metal casting.

Years into this process, the manufacturer of the colloidal silica introduced a new innovation – a dye was added that gave the shell a yellow color while it was still damp, but gradually turned orange when it dried. This was a valuable addition, as it allowed us to speed up the investment process since we were now no longer unsure whether the previous coat was dry before we applied the next coat.

In the room where this investment process took place, we kept a 5-gallon bucket of water where we would rinse our hands after investing the wax pattern. For years we emptied this bucket out on the ground on a corner of the property, and rinsed the bucket out before returning it to the shell room.

Now to the story:

One day, as I was rinsing out the bucket, I was approached by a U.S. Marshall who was looking for a fugitive that he believed either was working for us now or had worked for us in the past. I looked at the name and photograph and description of the fugitive and asserted that I had never seen the individual, that he was not working for us now, and that he had not ever worked for us.

The Marshall clearly did not believe me, and he requested to be allowed to come into the shop. I invited him in, and he looked over our employees and asked several of them if they knew or had ever seen the man in the photo. None did or had.

The Marshall departed, obviously frustrated, and apparently believing we were covering for the fugitive.

Several weeks later I was at home having dinner when I got a phone call from a friend who owned a business at the end of our street. He suggested that I might want to come back to work, as there were a number of emergency vehicles, including a fire truck, on the street in front of the foundry.

When I arrived at our street I found the Sheriff’s Department had set up roadblocks at both ends of the street and was denying access to any of the buildings on the block. I identified myself to a deputy as the owner of the building where the emergency vehicles were parked and asked to be allowed to pass. A short time later I was granted access.

When I arrived at the front of the foundry I was surprised to find not only the fire engine that could be seen from the end of the street, but a second, smaller fire truck, a fire chief’s pickup truck, a Hazardous Materials truck with two people in HazMat suits including breathing units, two Emergency Medical Technicians, and several firemen. Most of the vehicles had their red emergency lights on and rotating, and their headlights and spotlights focused on the corner area where we routinely washed out our 5-gallon bucket.

The lead fireman had directed the deputy to let me through, and he greeted me as I arrived. “What the hell is that?” He pointed to the wash area.

One feature of the dye used in the colloidal silica is that not only does the yellow color turn orange as it dries, and white after it is subjected to heat, but it also reconstitutes to yellow when subjected to water.

We had had a light rain that day, and our dumping ground looked pretty formidable – a slightly muddy, ugly mixture of yellow, orange, and white.

I explained what it was and asserted that it was totally inert and safe. He was having none of it.

I asked permission to enter the building to retrieve the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by the manufacturer, that would give a complete description of the colloidal silica that was causing so much angst. He hesitated, then made a call on his radio. It was then that I realized they had set up a remote staging area on a vacant property a couple of blocks away.

It took a while, but I was allowed to enter the building. I returned with the MSDS and gave it to the fireman. He read it over, then gave it to another fireman to deliver to whoever was in charge at the staging area.

Time passed. Apparently from the staging area a number of calls were made, to the emergency number listed on the MSDS, and several other CTA calls to verify the information.

Eventually the radio message came from the staging area. “Wrap it up. The material is inert.”

As the assembled team began to stand down, I asked, “What would you have done if I hadn’t arrived?”

“We would have brought in an excavator, dug out the soil, loaded it into sealable 55-gallon drums, and transported it to a hazardous waste materials site.”

“Who would have paid for that?”

“You would.”