Casting the Wat's New Buddha Statue - Day #3 But Not the End

People Retrieving Bronze Casting Splatter

Duang and I returned to Wat Ban Maet at 7:50 A.M. for the 8:00 A.M. scheduled start of the activities related to the new bronze Buddha statue for the sala.  We had asked about the time, confirmed the time, verified and re-verified the start time with the casting crew the previous afternoon upon completion of pouring the bronze.

I anticipated witnessing and photographing the removal of the plaster casting mold, rigging of the statue into place, and polishing of the statue.

As we pulled into the parking area at the Wat, Duang's often spoken words echoed in my head ... "Thailand not same Amireeka".  Although it was not quite 8:00 A.M., the large off-white plaster mold was no longer standing in the center of the casting area.  The plaster cast was located next to the larger beige cast that was bound for Loei, 4 hours to the west.

Some of the local people were scavenging small pieces of bronze splatter from the previous afternoon's casting operation.  No doubt these objects would be incorporated into home shrines or worn in conjunction with amulets to take advantage of their mystical powers.

Local People Removing the Casting Mold From Statue Arm

As the casting crew occupied themselves with breaking camp and loading up their flatbed truck for the next casting site in Loei, another group of local people removed the hard plaster casting mold from the two hands of the statue.  Typically statues are cast in sections because of complexity and delicacy of certain parts.

Cast Bronze Hand Still Wrapped In Mold Reinforcing Steel

Duang checked with the casting crew and determined that they along with the new statue were travelling to Loei for four days to cast the bigger statue.  They then would take a full day to drive back to their factory in Chonburi.

In Chonburi, the molds would be removed from around the statues, the statues would then be ground to remove imperfections and remove any remnants of the casting process, arms and other delicate features would be attached, and the statues highly polished along with a final coating applied.  In about two weeks the completed statues would be delivered and installed at their respective Wats.  I am fairly certain that there will be a special ritual for setting the statue inside of the sala - which we may or may not be able to witness - not for the lack of trying but more likely the miscommunication of timing.

Clarity in communicating time is complicated by the differences in telling time in Thai and telling time in English.  In English time is typically broken into two 12 hour clocks with the time being differentiated by A.M. and P.M. example: 5:00 A.M (morning) and 5:00 P.M. (afternoon, night). Military time, one 24 hour clock, eliminates the need to differentiate between A.M. and P.M. or day and night example: 0500 and 1700.

In Thai, there are 4 clocks of 6 hours each for a day. The first clock of the day is from 12 midnight to 5:00 A.M. These hours are named:  Tiang keun (midnight), dtee neung, dtee song, dtee saam, dtee see, and dtee haa - except for midnight, "dtee" followed by the Thai name for the numbers 1,2,3,4, or 5 - OK, a little different but manageable in my opinion.

6:00 morning - is Hok Mohng (6 o'clock) or Hok Mohng Cao (6 o,clock morning) - Still manageable ...for me.

However the time from 7 to 11 A.M. is where the confusion starts.  The second clock of the day in Thai kicks in at 7:00 - jet mohng chao (7 o'clock morning) OR neung mohng chao (one o'clock in the morning), 8:00 under the Thia method can be referred to as song mohng chao (two o'clock in the morning)

Often Duang has told me that we needed to go somewhere or do something at see mohng cao "4 o'clock in the morning" rather than the western terminology of 10:00 A.M. - talk about some confusion!

The potential for confusion includes the hours 7:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M. with the Thai time being 7:00 P.M. - tum neung or neung tum (one o'clock), 8:00 P.M. - song tum (two o'clock) - Yes, Duang has caused me some adrenalin rushes telling me things using this Thai method for telling time!

Other people were busy dismantling the offering table used for the previous day's ritual.  As we were leaving, one of the women came over and gave us two of the watermelons that had been offered to the spirits.  After getting permission, Duang removed two of the scallop shell wind chimes that had hung at the entry to the casting area.  The wind chimes now hang outside of our home.  "Good for us, good for house"  Good for Duang - she hung them so that they do not work - I can't stand the sound of wind chimes!

Hand Painted Gable of the New Sala

Casting the Wat's New Buddha Statue - Day #2

Workmen Pour Molten Bronze Into Mold for Buddha Statue

Sunday, 1 February, was the big day for casting the Buddha statue for Wat Ban Maet.

Our day at the Wat started at 9:15 A.M. - our timing was to coincide with the start of the daily Ta Bart ritual.  There was a very large crowd at the Wat.  The new sala was filled with chi pohm, the women who were participating in the two night religious retreat, and laypeople - many of them children.  Children receive religious training and instruction at a very early age.  With lighting candles and burning incense being central to worship ritual, most children are very willing students.

Worshipping with Yai (Grandmother) and Teddy

Outside of the new sala and the old sala, many people were occupied setting up food and beverages on bamboo tables.  The food and beverages on the tables were not intended for the Monks.  The food was for the people who had arrived to witness the casting of the statue of Buddha.

Everyday people bring food to offer to the Monks.  The Monks take a little bit from the various platters, plates, and bowls - placing their selections inside of their Monk's bowl.  The food that they have selected must be totally consumed during their one meal of the day.  Their meal must also be consumed by 12:00 Noon.  Food that has not been selected by the Monks, is placed on the woven reed mats, sahts, that had been placed on the floor of the sala.  The laypeople then have a community meal.  This is the way it is all across Thailand - anyone and everyone is invited as well as welcomed to eat the food that the Monks do not accept.  Years ago, Duang and her children survived by eating this way.

On special celebrations, the casting of a statue being one, there is another tradition involving food and drinks.  Since the special celebrations last longer than the typical two hour daily Tak Bart ritual, people donate food and drinks for the people.

Some people, often families, donate 1.5 liter bottles of soft drinks - colas, Fanta Strawberry, Fanta Orange, Fanta "Amoung" (a banana, pineapple, coconut, orange concoction). The soda is then distributed to everyone in small plastic cups filled with either crushed ice or ice cubes from large plastic coolers placed on the ground.

Young Girl Enjoying Her Soft Drink

Other people supply small prepackaged drinking water or prepackaged soft drinks (fruit juices and kool aid)  The various booths and stalls are manned by family members of all ages.  Children at an early age learn to help and participate in good works.

Other stalls offer curries, noodle dishes, rice dishes, ice-cream, and donuts.

The ice cream booth was quite interesting - as always.  You have three choices for your ice cream - a cone, a bowl, or ... small hot dog bun.  Hot dog bun?  Yup - here in Isaan you can get three small scoops of ice cream served open faced on bread.

The ice cream arrives in large, heavily insulated metal cylinders.  Flavors are typically coconut, strawberry, jackfruit, and corn. Corn?  Here in Thailand corn is used just as much for a dessert as for a vegetable entre.   Other popular flavors are mango, pineapple and taro. I opted for a single scoop cone of Jackfruit ... twice!

People earn merit by offering free food and drinks to the people at these events.  However there is a hierarchical order in earning merit.  You earn merit for offering food to people at Wats but not as much as offering food to the Monks during Tak Bart - either at a Wat or alongside the road as the Monks walk by.

The previous day, before we left for the day. we confirmed that the statue would be poured at 1:00 P.M.  Our plan was to arrive at the Wat for Tak Bart, stay for the casting of the statue , and return home around 2:30 P.M.

Casting Crew Accommodations

The casting of the Buddha statue was performed by a company from Chonburi - roughly 8 hours from Udonthani.  The ten person crew, 9 men and 1 woman, arrived at Wat Ban Maet with the mold to be cast as well as a much larger mold for another statue to be cast in Loei - 4 hours west of Udonthani.

The crew arrives at a location three days before the scheduled casting day.  The first day is spent offloading the firewood to fuel the temporary furnaces required for the casting operation.  Besides the firewood, there are also many bags of charcoal to fuel the furnaces.  The firewood is burned in a large furnace that surrounds the statue mold.  Charcoal is burned to create the much higher temperature necessary to melt the bronze ingots for the casting.

The crew also offloads their bags of refractory cement, metal stands, piping to be used as furnace and mold supports, as well as their crucibles and pouring tools.

While part of the crew works at offloading the statue mold, setting it upside down and constructing the natural draft furnace around it, other members of the crew construct the bamboo/macramé panels that form the ritual area for the casting process.

Natural Draft Wood Fired Furnace Drying Out Statue Mold

The mold for the statue was fabricated at the company's facility in Chonburi.  The mold is associated with the lost wax, also referred to as the investment, cast process.  I wrote about the process on a much small scale regarding a visit to a Wat near Khon Kaen,

http://hale-worldphotography.blogspot.com/2014/10/forest-foundry-not-to-be-confused-with.html

Since the statue to be cast is much larger and will contain 500 KG (1,100 pounds) of molten bronze, the mold is much more substantial than the molds used in Khon Kaen.  A great deal of reinforcement steel, chicken wire, was incorporated into the Wat Ban Maet to handle hoop stresses and evenly distribute heat throughout the plaster mold.

The mold arrived at the Wat as a three layer sandwich - a wax/clay core with a thick plaster coating on each side.  The wax/clay core melts out of the mold creating a void into which the molten bronze will flow and fill.

After setting the mold and building a furnace around it, the workers heated the mold for 2 days.  Heating the mold serves several purposes - it hardens as well as cures the plaster, it removes any moisture from the mold (water and molten metal is an explosive combination due to rapid creation of steam), it removes the internal wax/clay core, and heats the mold to ensure that the molten metal does not "freeze" when poured into the mold during the pouring process.

As is typical for traveling workers in Southeast Asia, the casting crew did not stay in hotels or guest houses.  They stayed in small tents and under an awning that they had brought with them - camping out on location of their work.

Duang and I, on Sunday, stayed at the Wat until roughly 10:30 A.M. when it became obvious that the casting would not happen at 1:00 P.M.  We asked around and verified with the casting crew supervisor that the casting would actually be at 5:00 P.M.  We returned home to relax and take advantage of the more convenient restroom facilities of our home.  I spent a couple hours working on photos when an inner voice, perhaps a spirit, told me that we should return to the Wat immediately.  I told my wife to get ready.  She reminded me that it was too early for the casting at 5:00 P.M. I told her about my premonition and attributed it to Buddha - end of any further discussion from her!

We arrived back at the Wat at 3:45 P.M. to find the place a beehive of activity.  Dignitaries had arrived and were seated in their places of honor in front of the new sala.

Luang Por Pohm Likit and Dignitaries In Front of New Sala

The two forced draft charcoal fuelled furnaces for melting the bronze ingots were blazing away sending thick clouds of smoke into the late afternoon sky.  The oxygen required to raise the charcoal fire to the necessary temperature to melt the bronze was supplied by forcing air into the bottom of the fire by electrical blowers located at the side of each furnace.

Forced Draft Furnaces Ablaze - Melting Bronze Ingots

Tending to the Bronze Furnace

Small Molds for Statue Parts

The large temporary furnace around the statue mold had been dismantled  and replaced by metal pedestals at four corners to the mold.  Although the furnace was gone the remaining coals on the ground surrounding the mold were still giving off quite a bit of heat.

Heating Up the Tools for Casting Bronze

Many spectators were situated just inside the casting area along the east side.

Witnesses to a Casting

This was another family affair with the audience being people of all ages, in some cases four generations of a family.  Just before the actual start of the casting process, a sai sin, white cotton string, was unrolled and held by each of the witnesses.  The sai sin connects people, alive and dead, with the Monks and statues during many rituals of Theravada Buddhism.  The string, a sacred thread, brings good luck and good fortune to people while connecting the people to the spirit world.  On Sunday, the sai sin connected all the people - the lay people, the young, the old, the Monks, the dignitaries with the mold for the statue.

The casting process began with four Monks ascending and sitting in the lotus position on the large elevated rattan thrones laced in each corner of the casting area.  A small portion of the statue - the flame usnisa which is placed on top of the statue's head  to signify Buddha's enlightenment was cast with the assistance of the ranking dignitaries.  I assume that the small casting was the flame usnisa based upon the shape of the mold.  Of course my analysis is presupposed upon the notion that you can judge or at least determine a casting by its mold unlike not judging a book by its cover. The casting proceeded with the rhythmic and somewhat hypnotic chanting of the Monks filling the air.  Their voices disappearing into the late afternoon sky along with the disappearing pillars of grey and white smoke plumes of the casting process.

Casting the Flame Usnisa

The casting of the main part of the statue proceed rapidly and continuously after the formalities of the flame usnisa.  Time and the cooling effects of open air are the enemies of making high quality castings.  Bronze melts at 1,700F and is poured into the hot mold to ensure that it remains free flowing throughout the mold and to prevent is from freezing.

Awaiting the Word to Commence Pouring the Statue

The casting crew manned their work stations - four men at the top pouring platform level, four at the intermediate level, and two people to carry the crucibles from the furnaces to the staging area and from the staging area to the intermediate level.

Under the Thai Buddhist Flag (Dhamakra Flag) and Sai Sins, Workers Top Off the Bronze Pour

After the main pour had been topped off, the dignitaries walked clockwise around the mold tossing offerings of flower petals on the mold.  After the dignitaries had completed their circumambulation, Luang Por Pohm Likit with the assistance from one of the casting crew sprinkled the mold with water  - akin to blessing the mold with holy water but more like transferring the merit of the proceeding ritual with the statue.

After completing the blessing of the cast statue, Luang Por Pohm Likit blessed (transferred merit) the crowd by sprinkling water upon them with a reed brush made specifically for that purpose.  As typically happens, I got a heavy dose of water and three taps to the head - much to the delight of the crowd.  I suspect that this is a sort of Buddhist evangelizing or proselytizing ... they do not try to persuade people to become Buddhists leaving it to individual choice - "up to you" but I suspect a little extra water and three taps (the Buddhist three gems - Buddha, the teaching of Buddha, and the Sanga (Buddhist religious community) are offered as encouragement.

Blessing the Crowd

The ritual was now completed.  I looked at my watch and noted that it was 5:02 P.M.!  It was very fortunately that I had listened to my or whosever voice that I was hearing back at our home.  Well as Duang reminds me "Thailand not same, Amireeka"

As we left the Wat, I stopped by the worker's accommodation and had some fun with the supervisor who I had gotten to know.  I looked at him and pointed at my watch and then at the completed cast statue.  I told him in Thai that I did not understand.  I told him it was 100% at 5:00 P.M. not 0% like he told me.  He instantly knew that I was joking with him.  I told him that I was happy that Buddha told me to go to the Wat at 3:45 P.M. not 5:00 P.M.!

I then had Duang ask him when the plaster mold would be removed from the casting and the statue placed in the sala.  He told us it would be 8:00 A. M. the next morning.  I asked twice to confirm that it was 8:00 A.M. the next morning and not 8:00 P.M. that night or the next night.  I reminded him about his telling me 5:00 P.M. for today's casting when it actually ended up being 4:00 P.M. - "Thailand not same Amireeka".  We all enjoyed a good laugh, said goodbye , and promised to return the next day at 8:00 A.M.

Casting the Wat's New Buddha Statue - Day #1



One of the many signs directing visitors to Wat Ban Maet

The casting of the Buddha statue for the new sala at Wat Ban Maet was a two day event, Saturday 31 January and Sunday 1 February.

We arrived at the Wat around 9:30 A.M., our typical time for the daily merit making ritual of offering food to Luang Por Pohm Likit and the samanen who also stays at the Wat.

I had not been out to the Wat for about three weeks and was surprised at all the work that had been accomplished during that time.  Two large plots of land off to the side of the new sala had been cleared and leveled for use as parking lots.  Even at the relatively early hour of 9:30 A.M., the lots were fairly well filled with vehicles.

In front of the sala, there was a large area cordoned off with panels constructed from freshly cut bamboo, strings, and pakamas.  Archways that provided access to this impound area were located on the narrow dirt road that runs past the Wat and another archway was opposite the first leading directly to the sala.  The archways were created from tall bamboo poles and very intricate weaving of colored string to create three dimensional shapes.  Offerings of banana stalks, coconuts, turban squashes were placed on the sides of the arches.  Thai flags and the Dharmakra flag (the Thai Buddhist flag) flew from the vertical supports of each panel.  Scallop shell wind chimes were attached to the corner supports.  I am certain that these items were related to ancient Animist beliefs as well as rituals.

I was intrigued by the handcrafted panels that surrounded the casting area.  They reminded me of a combination of large scale macramé and large scale "dream catchers" favored by hippies and new age people back in the USA.  I asked Duang about them.  She said that the crew who were going to cast the Buddha statue had made them and set them up.  She added that some of the people at the Wat had helped to make them.

Security Fence?

Panel with an Origami rosette made from a Pakama

A Design Utilizing Different Diameter Yarns

Tonight, in preparing to write this blog entry, I asked Duang for more detail about these fabric sculptures, dream catchers, macramé or whatever they are.  Duang told me that they were "Sirimohnkhun". 

Many times there are issues in learning and understanding some of the things that I observe here.  The first issue is Thai as well as Lao our tonal languages - for many words there are five different ways to say them and hear them. Each of the five ways of saying the word has completely different and highly unrelated meanings.  For 65 years my world has been basically a monotonic world with only an inflection at the end of a sentence if asking a question. On a good day, a VERY GOOD day I may be able to hear three of the five ways to say a Thai word.

There are often more than one way to spell Thai words, even if you correctly hear them first.  Many tourists as well as resident expats have been confused reading road maps and street signs in Thailand due to different or unique English  translations.

Another issue is Duang not being a native English speaker and she is not able to write English just as can not read or write Thai.  This does not present any major difficulties in our daily life but is an issue when trying to learn and understand cultural differences.

I tried through Google to learn more about "Sirimohnkhun", "Sirimonkun", "Silimongkhun" or was it "Silimonkun"? to no avail.

According to Duang "Sirimohnkhun" are good for lor paht - same same lor paht, lor paht #1 Buddha in Thailand, good luck for people, good for everything"  Now you know as much as I do.

There were many women at the Wat on Saturday.  They were participating in a two night religious retreat.  Duang participated in three of them during the past Vassa, Buddhist Rain Retreat.  During the religious retreat the women listen to religious sermons and readings by the Monks.  The women also do a great deal of chanting day and night.  The woman are supposed to stay awake the entire period but many end up falling asleep in their little tents that are meant for resting and meditating.

The women, known as "chi pohm" during the retreat, followed the Monks for the Tak Bart ritual.  Lay people, family and friends offered them food for their one meal of the day.

A Chi Pohm Accepts A Food Offering

After eating their meal, the chi pohm returned to the old sala to chant and participate in rituals lead by the Monks.  Other women, dressed in white for the serious nature of the day, busied themselves preparing for the next day's activities.

Women Making Centerpieces for the Next Day's Rituals

Hand Made Baii Sii Kuwan - banana leaves and jasmine buds

Off to the side in the cordoned off area, there was a pavilion where tables and chairs had been set up.  Men sat at the table selling gold for casting the statue.  There were ingots of various weights on sale for 200, 300, 500, and 1,000 baht ($30.00 USD).  People paid for the metal and their name and the amount of their donation was recorded in a ledger - just as is done for weddings, funerals, monk ordinations, tambon roy wan (death anniversary) and special fund raising events at the Wats.

I went up to the tables to check out the gold.  I lifted up the ingots and was fairly certain that they were not gold.  The ingots were not as heavy as lead ingots of roughly the same size that I was familiar with.  I am also familiar with gold ingots fresh out of the smelter from my construction engineering career.  I then banged a couple of the ingots together and created a high pitched ping sound rather than the expected low bass thud of gold.  I was now convinced that the metal was not gold but more likely some type of copper alloy.  It then occurred to me that the casting metal was actually bronze - 90% copper and 10% tin with will create a "gold color" statue for a great deal less money.

Next to the metal desk, there was a tree which had many thin rectangles of gold and silver dangling in the breeze.  The thin metal disks, copper and tin, were embossed with writing and symbols.  People paid a small amount for each piece.  They removed the piece of their choice and used one of three available 16d nails to write their name, and birth date, number- month- year, on the metal.  Some people were not able to write, so a local man who is a policeman took the information from their national ID card and wrote it for them

Once a piece was completed, it was returned to the tree.  The next day, the completed pieces would be melted with the ingots to bring good luck and fortune to the donor.

Completed Metal Offerings

In the center of the casting area, a temporary furnace was blazing.  The mold for the Buddha statue had been placed upside down with the furnace built around it.  A large wood fueled fire was maintained in the furnace to cure the mold and drive out all moisture prior to casting the next day.

Temporary Furnace Blazing Away

Statue Mold Inside of Furnace

Off to the side of the furnace there were two smaller furnaces set up with crucibles inside of them for melting the ... bronze ingots.  These furnaces would be fuelled by lump charcoal with forced draft created by electrical fans.

Crucibles with some Metal Offerings

Crucibles Loaded For Melting the Next Day

We returned to our home at 5:30 P.M. to rest, sleep and prepare to return the next morning for the big pour and ceremony.

Backyard Smelter Revisited

Aluminum Ingots Melting In Backyard Smelter - 2007

A while back on Facebook, some people shared a link which showed the results of pouring molten aluminum down an ant hill.  The result once the aluminum cooled down, the ant hill excavated, and the resultant mass of metal cleaned up was a very intricate and modern art type sculpture.  The molten aluminum had filled all of the small underground tunnels exposing the complexity and industriousness of the tiny ants.  In response to the link I replied, rather fallaciously, that I would have to give it a try the next time that I was melting aluminum in my back yard.  I had melted lead in the backyard of my parent's home but that was in the days before the EPA and OSHA.  Since my father was a plumber, we had all the equipment required to make cast lead joints in soil pipe (cast iron sewer pipes) or in my case, cast lead sinkers for fishing and lead weights for skin diving.

Although I have neither the intention, need, or equipment to melt aluminum in my backyard, there are people in Thailand who do.  I have written about people here in Thailand who weave cloth, weave reed mats, make fishing nets, weave baskets in their yards.  I have written about the experience of watching people in Laos making knives, moonshine whiskey, bird snares, and rat snares in their yards.  Well this blog is about having your own aluminum foundry in your yard.

Samut Sakhon Home With Casting Cores - 2007

In March 2007, Duang and I visited the Samut Sakhon area.  One of our visits was to the home of Duang's granddaughter.  It was nice to see the child and there was an added bonus - the operating family run aluminum smelter in their backyard.

Samut Sakhon is a province south west of Bangkok.  The area is dotted with many industrial sites ranging from food to chemicals.  There are also many orchards that produce fruits as well as farms that cultivate shrimp.  The land is low and flat.  Just as Thai food is a mixture of flavors, colors, and textures, Samut Sakhon is a mixture, a melange,  of heavy industry and agriculture with the borders of each often touching.

Duang's granddaughter lives with her other grandparents in an elevated wood house down a very narrow rutted dirt road in an area that is crisscrossed with many canals.  They have the family run aluminum smelter in their yard.  The smelter produces various items under contract to many different clients.  It is a small smelter that uses sand casting method to produce various items such a roof drains, heating plates, and equipment parts.

Preparing to Remove Cast Plate From the Mold

On our trip back in 2007, I was excited to see the foundry operation.  It brought back some memories of the summer of 1970, when I worked at ITT Grinnell in Cranston, Rhode Island.  During part of that summer while attending university I worked in the labor pool that filled in for absent workers who were involved in producing cast iron fittings mostly for sprinkler fittings.

In Samut Sakhon, just as in Rhode Island, the casting process involved starting off with a pattern - a metal three dimensional representation of one half of the object to be made.  A wood frame is placed on top of the pattern, and filled with sand or special sand mixture.  The sand is pressed and compacted in the frame which is on top of the pattern.  When the frame/compressed sand assembly is lifted off of the pattern, the pattern has created an impression in the sand for one-half of the object to be made.  The process is repeated for the send half of the object to be made.  The two frames are then stacked and attached so that they create the mold,complete volume, of the object between them.  If the object is to have hollow sections, special inserts, called cores, are placed in the bottom half frame before assembly so that the molten metal will flow around them rather than forming a solid section.  Often the pattern will also contain channels and features to ensure that the poured liquid metal properly flows into and completely fill every aspect of the mold. A pour hole and vent hole at the other end of the mold allows the molten metal to completely fill the mold and provides visual indication the the mold if filled.

For the backyard smelter in Samut Sakhon this molding process occurred in the front section of the ramshackle structure that constituted the foundry.  The structure was single story built out of wood, timbers, and corrugated metal and not necessarily weatherproof - there were many gaps, holes, and voids in the walls.  There were no doors or windows in the structure.  There were door and window openings which provided access and some natural cross ventilation. All surfaces of the structure were covered with a thick layer of fine black dust from the casting sand and smoke of the furnace.  The roof above the furnace was much better maintained for obvious reason - water falling into molten aluminum would definitely ruin several people's day.

Loading Aluminum Ingots Into Furnace

Smelting of the aluminum was conducted in a small open topped furnace about the size of a 55 gallon drum - a 55 gallon drum that had been heavily lined with refractory.  Off to the side of the drum connected by a pipe was an electric fan which created the forced draft for the burner beneath the furnace.  There were other drums containing what appeared to be recycled motor oil.  The contents of the barrels were pressurized by a small pump and fed into the burner beneath the open refractory lined drum.  Do to the lack of pollution controls and adequate burner management, heavy dense black smoke billowed from the short chimney that stuck up above the roof directly above the furnace.

The Smelter's Granddaughter

Whereas the front section of the building was filled with three workers, two or three soi dogs (street dogs), an concessional wandering chicken, children playing, and a visiting falang (foreigner), the back section where the furnace was located and partially separated from the front by a half wall was occupied only by the owner of the business.  The combination of heat from the melting and molten aluminum, retching acrid smoke, and obvious danger kept others out.  Once the aluminum was melted and the furnace was throttled back to keep the metal molten, workers from the front entered the area routinely to fill their ladles to pour into the molds located in the front.

Pouring Molten Aluminum Into Mold

 Wearing rubber flip flops, polyester shorts and cotton tee shirts and no eye protection, gloves or any expected safety equipment that you would expect for handling 1200F molten metal, the workers filled the many assembled molds for the day's scheduled pour.  Their clothing and exposed skin quickly becoming caked with sweat, casting dust, and smoke residue - all reminders of my days at ITT Grinnell ( I was fond at the time of saying often "Who put the "grin" in Grinnell?) for, unlike the smelter in Samut Sakhon, it was not a happy place or was there much smiling let alone laughing.

Completed Castings Cooling

The poured molds were left strewn about the cast sand layered concrete floor of the front of the foundry to cool sufficiently before the the frames were removed to expose blocks of hardened casting sand, baked cores and aluminum.  Rods and hammers were used to manually break away the hardened casting sand to expose the aluminum castings.  This work added to the dust already in the air from previous activities.  Metal rods with a hook shape on the end were employed to remove the castings from the casting sand debris on the floor and to relocate the still very hot castings to piles in another area for further cooling.

After cooling completely the workers trimmed excess metal to be recycled in the next charge of the furnace. Hand files and electric grinders were then used to clean up the castings for delivery to the customers.

Well that was then and this is now.  Buddhists believe that every thing changes and nothing exists without change.  We returned to Smut Sakhon after seven years and there had been some changes.  The grandfather, the owner of the business, had died.   His wife was now running the business but not doing the physical labor as her husband had.  The granddaughter who was 4 years old at the time is now a lovely 11 year old doing very well in school.  Most of the workers had been replaced.  The narrow dirt road is even more rutted now and vegetation has encroached upon it making it even more narrow.

As many changes as there were, there were some things that had not changed or rather - had not changed yet.  One of the workers that I had photographed in 2007 was still working there.  Dogs and chickens still wandered about the work area.  The building was no worse for wear but no better either.  The round concrete table and bench seats were still located at the front of the building.  Various materials and items associated with the casting business still were strewn about the property.

We arrived in the early evening after the casting had been completed.  I went in the back to the idle furnace and observed nothing new or even changed.  My stay in that portion of the facility did not last long due to the extreme heat radiating from the furnace and molten aluminum that it still contained.

Removing A Core From Casting

In the front of the facility, men, as the day was coming to an end, were occupied freeing the castings from the hardened casting sand and removing the cores from the castings.

Cleaning Up Aluminum Castings

Chipping Away At A Core

Getting To The Core of the Casting, Chipping Away

It always interesting for me to see how people make their living here as well as the other countries that I have been to.  I especially like to witness people exhibiting their independence and self-sufficiency.  It always astound me how people can get by with so much less than I am accustomed to or have been exposed to.  A principle that drives their efforts is "Fit for purpose"  However I am also very grateful to not have a smelter in my backyard or even in my neighborhood.