Someone gave me a whole roll of wire, so I decided to strip it and melt it down. This is the prep work: these coils are what I ended up with.
Stripping the wire
First I had to peel off the insulation. The lathe made a convenient way to hold the spool.
Winding it
Then I realized I could wind the bare wire on a mandrel on the lathe and get a tighter winding for less effort.
Melted
The coils went into a graphite crucible, and were poured into a sand mold that was not, unfortunately, packed tightly enough.
A little turning cleaned it up a lot. I have been using one of the two as a drift, for tapping things down into the vise. The other one will probably get melted down again to make something at some point.
