This older topic may be more relevant now that all the Covid shortages are going, no matter whether they are artificially staged or real.
Casting iron requires a lot less technology than one would ever expect. The melting can be done in a cupola furnace, and the molds are "green sand". Many modern folks have built cupola's in their back yard from scrap yard materials. In the old days of steam engines, cupola's were also often assembled from locally scavenged materials. They can be run on coal, coke, or wood charcoal. Coal can be used directly but is internally converted into coke during the run. Lime or limestone is often used as the "flux". You can bet this is the technology most of the Indians are using on the listeroids. It is interesting to note that in the steam engine days before coal came into use, England nearly destroyed it's forests casting iron from charcoal. It takes a lot more charcoal than coal or coke to cast the same amount of iron, although charcoal is a renewable fuel. Charcoal is also easy to make for the backwoods folks.
Green sand casting is also an old art. The sand often scavenged locally and purified with simple water processing. Horse manure was once used as a binder and is believed to be the process used to cast the Liberty Bell. There are many other binders such as starches, cereals, molasses, and natural substances used. The only real requirement is that the binders and additives do not create an oxidizing atmosphere when the molten metal hits the mold. They also must decompose a "limited" amount so the mold can be easily broken away from the casting but remain solid enough to contain the molten metal before it solidifies. The used sand is recycled with limited additions of new additives.
The sand molds are made from patterns that in the old days were usually made from wood, and often hand carved. The wood is usually varnished or painted with something to make it last longer in production. The mold frames can be made from wood or metal. There is a lot of manual labor involved in making sand molds. When duplicating an existing casting, "shrinkage" must be added, so does all machining stock allowances. This prevents direct pattern making by reverse molding processes unless the duplicated object is "built up" or coated thick enough to allow for the shrinkage and machining. Yes you can make a mold pattern with nothing more than a pocket knife and wood cut off from a tree!
The cupola's are made from metal casings lined with refractory materials. This is the most challenging part for the back woods craftsman. Ordinary concrete will not work and is dangerous. Ordinary firebrick will likely melt as most is only rated for 1800 deg. F. or so and you will be hitting 2500 deg. F. or even a little higher in the cupola. High alumina is what you use. Kaolin clays can be used to DIY make these refractories. The easiest thing to do is order some high alumina castable or rammable refractory from a foundry supply or industrial supply.
You will also need some type of blower. The size depends on the size of the cupola but they are easy to find and can be DIY built and run off any electric motor that has the right HP and RPM.
All of the material handling equipment can be DIY assembled as well. Cupola's can be run as long as you feed materials into the top of them, or in batch runs if you single load them.
There use to be a lot of books about cupola furnaces available. They essentially won the west here in the US. Simply put, if they were not reasonably easy to build and use in "backwoods" type conditions we would not be getting Listeroids from India.
Now the "formulas" for cast iron are very well developed in today's world as metallurgy is a very mature science. However, they were not in the days of the original Lister engines. Back then cast iron "recipes" were more like secret moonshine making formulas, and some of the foundry men likely did make shine on the side in the moonlight. They usually read something like "add x amount of scrap from x metal yard, x amount of pig iron from x source only, x amount of wrought iron scrap from x source" and so forth. Use the wrong materials and you will have hard brittle cast iron that is fragile and not machinable but will last forever if not broken. Use the right formula and you get ductile and machinable cast iron you can make crankcases, cylinders and rings with. Today, cast iron can be made from low carbon steel from scrap yards. Enough carbon to change it to cast iron is naturally added in the melting process. Adding old cast iron castings (broken up) helps too.
I have actually built aluminum, steel melting and heat treat furnaces. They are really not that technically difficult. Casings are welded together, and anyone who has worked cement can deal with installing the refractory linings. Also keep in mind that you need at least 2450 deg. F. to get a minimal casting quality and you can't get that with natural gas, or propane and just a blower. You can get up to about 2300 but that wont work here. You can get that temp if you use a regenerative system like the foundries use but that is more complex than most DIYer's want to deal with and requires expensive high temp aerospace metals, or a large brick chamber switching system. Fuel oil might work theoretically, but again more complex. Most modern steel melter's use arc or induction. While induction is within reach of some of the more educated DIYer's it requires a substantial power source for Lister sized casting work and is not likely well suited for backwoods settings. My goal here is to present some methods that can be used in non-modernized "bush" settings.
And Please, NO TROLLS accusing their intended "prey" as being a troll.
