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Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) Boulder river foundry (Read 1692 times)
Stank
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Boulder river foundry
Jan 14th, 2025 at 3:23pm
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Does anyone know if Boulder River Foundry ever offered any highwall parts sets. I have an as cast action and other parts that I believe came from there. 
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LRF
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #1 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 6:02am
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Did you try Google? It's likely they did.
  
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Old-Win
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #2 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 7:16am
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Yes they did and it's quality stuff. They make the Shiloh castings and are right next door to the Shiloh rifle company.
  
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Stank
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #3 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 10:50am
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The box the parts are in says Boulder River Foundry. I did a search and as far as I can tell they do not offer it now. They only produce Sharps castings for Shiloh. 
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GT
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #4 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 11:05am
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I have one of their castings staged in my build line-up.  They left plenty of material to make this dimensionally correct to any drawing you may have - Frame, lower tang, lever, hammer, triggers, right down to the sear.  How's your's?
  

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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #5 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 2:40pm
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This was probably ten years ago, but I took a tour of the Shiloh Factory and the Boulder River Foundry and Bob (IIRC), who was squiring us around, said that they would be amenable to making castings for individuals.  I imagine the individual would have to provide the patterns for the wax castings, and of course availability would depend on their own internal needs, but I found that interesting, although I had no particular parts in mind back then.
  
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #6 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 4:28pm
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From what I have read Shiloh is the owner the foundry.
  
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #7 - Jan 15th, 2025 at 6:22pm
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From the July 2019 "Rifle" magazine.

Quote:
A Montana family, Robert, Phyllis, Kirk and Lucinda Bryan, bought Shiloh in 1991. Besides modernizing their rifle manufacturing, they built the Boulder River Foundry next door to the rifle plant so all investment casting is done right in Big Timber.
  

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Stank
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #8 - Jan 16th, 2025 at 9:19am
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GT wrote on Jan 15th, 2025 at 11:05am:
I have one of their castings staged in my build line-up.  They left plenty of material to make this dimensionally correct to any drawing you may have - Frame, lower tang, lever, hammer, triggers, right down to the sear.  How's your's?

I do believe my casted set is complete with pins,extractor etc. I don’t believe I saw a mainspring though. 
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #9 - Jan 16th, 2025 at 9:21am
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Stank wrote on Jan 16th, 2025 at 9:19am:
GT wrote on Jan 15th, 2025 at 11:05am:
I have one of their castings staged in my build line-up.  They left plenty of material to make this dimensionally correct to any drawing you may have - Frame, lower tang, lever, hammer, triggers, right down to the sear.  How's your's?

I do believe my casted set is complete with pins,extractor etc. I don’t believe I saw a mainspring though. 
Stank

I don’t even remember where I got this but I also got a 50 caliber winchester barrel with it. I don’t know what the barrel is chambered in though.
  

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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #10 - Jan 19th, 2025 at 10:29am
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I dug mine out of the staging bins, here's a pic of it.  It's a coil spring, straight tang, double set arrangement.  The original purchaser received it in 2000 and this one has no pins or screws. 
 
I haven't made up my mind yet as to which caliber it's going to be so motion forward hasn't begun.  The individual I bought it from is a member here and he's waiting to see results...
Greg
  

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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #11 - Jan 20th, 2025 at 8:51am
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Yes, Boulder River did make a high wall casting set. I saw them when I got a tour of the foundry in 2018 when I visited Shiloh. With the MVA high wall I doubt if they sell many of these now. I've done business with the foundry. They have excess capacity for Shiloh's needs and take in other work. I asked Kirk if there was a minimum quantity requirement and he told me, yes, one part. Randy, the foundry manager told me he has a customer that deals in high quality hammer doubles and that he will send in a hand carved wax pattern of a broken hammer and the foundry will cast it. I'm getting ready to send a new mold for a 1st Mod Maynard hammer to them for casting. They did my Maynard take down pins for me.
  
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #12 - Jan 20th, 2025 at 11:03am
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Deadeye Bly wrote on Jan 20th, 2025 at 8:51am:
Yes, Boulder River did make a high wall casting set. I saw them when I got a tour of the foundry in 2018 when I visited Shiloh. With the MVA high wall I doubt if they sell many of these now. I've done business with the foundry. They have excess capacity for Shiloh's needs and take in other work. I asked Kirk if there was a minimum quantity requirement and he told me, yes, one part. Randy, the foundry manager told me he has a customer that deals in high quality hammer doubles and that he will send in a hand carved wax pattern of a broken hammer and the foundry will cast it. I'm getting ready to send a new mold for a 1st Mod Maynard hammer to them for casting. They did my Maynard take down pins for me.


This is really interesting.  Can you go through the process, wax used and what ever else is needed for them to cast steel parts?   
I have a lever in mind that would be much easier to cast than machining from solid steel.
Bob
  

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ssdave
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #13 - Jan 20th, 2025 at 11:28am
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Bob,  lost wax is fairly easy, you just get to work in softer material than steel.  

Here's where you get the wax:  (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Here's some info on the process:

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There's some nuances to it that you need to get down.  Steel shrinks about 7%  edit:  2%  I believe.  So, you need to oversize by a percentage in each direction, or leave extra material in critical fit areas to allow to machine back to shape.

You also have a casting "rind" and finish/polish loss, so you need to account for that also.  

The advantage of wax is you can shape a softer material.  Another advantage is you can weld pieces together easily by low heat, and can use sticky waxes to stick the pieces together before welding the seams to cover them up.  

The disadvantages are that the shrinkage makes it hard to get tight dimensional tolerances, since shrinkage is proporational to length, the shrinkage is different in all dimensions, and is somewhat affected by shape and bulk density of the cross sections, so it is non proportional.  There is also some loss rate; sending in one wax and having 100% success in getting a good part back isn't assured.  

What wax casting is good for is mass producing parts where working out the shrinkage is worth it because of mass production of the final part.  Or making hard to machine one-of a kind pieces.

What doesn't work, and why the casting sets on the market have some dimensional problems, is just molding original parts and then making the waxes from that mold.  The best way to do this is to take the original part, and dip it in a surface buildup liquid or slurry to evenly coat the outside to about 8 or 9 percent of the thickness.  Then, mold that part, make a wax, cast it, and compare the dimensions to an original.  Where the dimensions are too small, paint on additional slurry/buildup liquid onto the model, where they are too large, sand some off.  Repeat until you have acceptable results, and then use that mold.

A technique to use on elongated parts is to add the surface buildup as above, cast the part in brass, and then cut and paste in brass lengthening pieces as needed, surface coat the oversize brass model, and mold it. 
« Last Edit: Jan 20th, 2025 at 2:38pm by ssdave »  
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marlinguy
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Re: Boulder river foundry
Reply #14 - Jan 20th, 2025 at 2:09pm
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A centrifuge will make the lost wax casting process far more successful. We used one in art metal class in high school, and it made very intricate molds fully fill out when just pouring metal into molds from lost wax wouldn't. Without a centrifuge it's a crap shoot whether everything fills out. And of course preheating molds will also aid in filling fully.
  

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