Naknek, Alaska is a place mostly known for its wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. It is a remote bush community located off of Alaska’s main road system. It is also a place where my family works, calls home part time, creates art, explores, adventures, and sometimes more.
Disconnected from the road system, in Alaska everything in Naknek, AK seems like an adventure, here is one of ours. Isaac Van Houten and myself decided to build a furnace for casting aluminum in Naknek, Alaska as a way to produce art work, produce boat parts, and to share with the community a craft that we both have a long history with, metal casting. We began to build the furnace summer 2021, when in mid construction a bear smashed it. This summer 2022, we decided to just get the ball rolling and do things simple. Our furnace currently is a silicon carbide crucible wrapped with fiber insulation, a lid, and a forced air propane burner. Resources for aluminum are plentiful. There are a lot of aluminum commercial drift salmon fishing boats in the area that are continually getting work done to them. We are taking the scrap aluminum from the salmon industry and giving it a new life. The adventure part, well… resources are limited here, we have never done this before here, and we don’t think anyone else probably ever has. In the past there were blacksmith shops in the area for supporting the local canneries, but I believe this is the first cast metal.
The images seen above are of our first aluminum casting, a monkey’s fist knot, prior to finishing work. It was produced by using the lost wax method with a ceramic shell mold. The pattern was made by Isaac and I produced the wax and ceramic shell mold. The images below are patterns in progress for a 16” long commercial drift boat for salmon that was produced in cast aluminum.
This summer (2022) we also participated for the first time in the annual summer festival called Fishtival in Naknek. Fishtival is a celebration in community and a way of life. For Fishtival we did a live aluminum casting and demonstration of aluminum fish heads and monkey first rope knots. This was our way of sharing what we do with the community and saying thank you for all of the years of support. We now have fish heads and monkey first rope balls on display and for sale at Katmai Air (on the river) in King Salmon and the Bristol Bay Museum in Naknek. Pictured below are some images of the process and examples of the castings.
