Comments

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  Joe Rhea September 2, 2009 at 1:31pm

  We would get the majority of the core out then soak the finished castings in water and it would break down the water glass and everything would just come right out. As far as legends in the Molder rating the first names that come to mind are Molder Holmes, Mad Dog Madison, MLCS Paul
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  John R Sellars MLC USN RET September 2, 2009 at 1:10pm

  Wendell "Molder" Holmes is living in Kings Bay, Georgia near the Sub Base. I have talked to him a couple of times but the last several times I called he never answered back, then I had to give up commercial driving due to Diabetes. He seemed to be doing well.
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  aldo crose September 2, 2009 at 1:03pm

  You are so right Craig.
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  Craig Lami September 2, 2009 at 12:31pm

  In the Navy, I used Stynex for the CO2. It caused some trouble getting it out of the impellers we poured. We had more problems with the guys not getting all the core wires covered and they would stick inside the impeller. In the civilian foundry we used a generic water glass for cast iron brake calenders and had no trouble. A lot depended on how long the core cooked inside the casting before it cooled off. The hotter it got and the longer it stayed that way, the easier it came out. Thinner castings and lower temperatures meant you had to use less stynex.
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  aldo crose September 2, 2009 at 12:19pm

  As for Wendell Holmes, We called him Molder Holmes. He was sort of a legend in his time. He was quite a guy. As for to much water in the sand, we used to try to keep it at about 2%. When in the Navy, we used a speedy moister teller. Worked great. After I left the Navy, we had automatic moister tellers built into the sand system at the muller. I never had a problem with moister content. As for the CO2 sand being so hard to shake out. It all depanded on the binder you use. We always had at least three types of binder depending on what type of metal we were going to pour.
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  Geraldo Soto September 2, 2009 at 11:12am

  Thanks alot guys, you gave me nightmares by bringing up petrobond, used to order that crap by the tons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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  Roland Cardin September 2, 2009 at 10:51am

  And where is Holmes today? Anyone know. I think I went to A school with him, have to check if it was the same guy.
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  aldo crose September 2, 2009 at 10:39am

  We also had Petro Bond sand and I used to hate it. It was so dirty. When I got out of the Navy and went to work in the foundry industry, I found that the industry standard was either silica sand or olivine sand. with bentonite as a binder. When I went to work at a brass and brz. shop in N.C. we used only olivine sand for the molds and shell sand for the cores. We reclaimed the shell sand and continued to add virgin olivine to the mix. In doing so we had to send about 20,000 lbs, of olivine sand to hazmat disposal every month. As you can see, we used a lot of sand but we poured about 6 million pounds of metal a year. That was a nice shop. We made back flow preventer valves and the valve that is on the top of every hot water heater in the world. A lot of castings. We were the largest producer of these type of valves in the world.
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  John R Sellars MLC USN RET September 2, 2009 at 9:18am

  When I got on the Hector with Wendell Holmes, there was no olivine sand and we only used Petro Bond. Charlie Whitesides made sure of that.
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  Dennis Pennington September 2, 2009 at 12:56am

  FYI: In case you haven't noticed "US Navy Molders" page has the most members of any page on here, not counting RTC's and Navy Retired page.