This is a great tutorial on how to make a cheap Aluminum (or aluminium, depending on where you live) Forge. What’s especially nice is that you don’t need anything special. In fact I think I have everything that’s needed to build it in my basement. I wouldn’t do it in the house though, for multiple safety reasons, and since there’s a couple of feet of snow outside, I’ll have to wait until next spring to tackle this project. Maybe you’re lucky and have a garage, or live in a temperate climate.

Once you’ve smelted whatever aluminum scraps you had on hand (old parts, soda cans, etc.), you can use the molten metal to make ingots for later use, or you can pour them into molds to cast whatever you’d like.

Smelting metal is obviously dangerous and should be done very carefully. When doing potentially risky projects like that, I make sure I’m not alone, just in case something happens.

Aluminum factoids:

• Ancient Greeks and Romans used aluminium salts as dyeing mordants and as astringents for dressing wounds; alum is still used as a styptic.
• Discovered in 1825 by Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted.
• Isolated in 1827 by Friedrich Wöhler.
• The most abundant metal in the earth’s crust.
• 8% of the weight of the earth’s solid surface.
• Nontoxic, nonmagnetic, and non-sparking.
• Recycling involves melting the scrap, a process that uses only 5% of the energy needed to produce aluminum from ore.
• A small percent of people are allergic to it.
• Melting point: 933.47 K (660.32 °C, 1220.58 °F).

Aluminum Forge [link]