Page 19 - Abraham Lincoln Hearse Narrative

FIRST PROGRESS UPDATE ~ AUGUST, 2014 ~ ERIC HOLLENBECK
to tell you that I haven’t used the foundry for at
least 10 years and that was to melt brass with our
high school students and pour ingots. This means
that as we cleaned up here at the shop all the STUFF
we didn’t know what to do with wound up there
so it took two days to clean and organize the room.
Once done we started the forge (ours was built by
an old man in the 1940s and runs on kerosene!) and
we began melting scrap aluminum and pouring
ingots. Fifty pounds of ingots later we were ready
to try our first mould. As the boys watched and
Johnny Calkins (USN)
heated the aluminum I rammed up the cope and
drag for our first sand casting. It took me most of the morning to get ready and when we
poured and cleaned the sand away, there it was…
perfect! We all oohed and aahed; then I told them,
“You saw me do that so you clean up and make
ready and pour the next one. I’m going to smoke
my pipe.” I came into the office and asked my wife
to come out with
me and once
there, I called the
boys around and
said, “Now you
guys think I’ve
done that before, don’t you? Hell no, I haven’t, but I wasn’t
about to tell you that because you’d jinx me! The point being
we are all trained warriors; we don’t ask ourselves CAN WE
TAKE THAT MACHINE GUN, we charge ahead and get the
job done. Ain’t nobody keeping score of how many times you
have to
try; they
are only
interested
Barry Alton proud as punch in the
with a finished pour.
finished
completed project. Now get pouring.”
And that’s what they have been
doing. Oh, I forgot to say that just to make
things more interesting, we are also being
filmed through this process!

The four finished bases.

19