Help with Identification Antique Foundry Mold?

[cbotw27]

So I got this item from an estate sale and I was told it was something used in a foundry. It's made of wood so I don't know. I really would like to know what it is called and what it was used for. Can you help out? It almost looks like a ladle or something but they described it as a mold.

[lacemaker3 · Accepted solution]

Assuming that the information you were given was correct ...

This would have been called a "pattern" which is used to make a sand mold, which would then be used to sand-cast parts in metal, such as steel or iron. The sand mold is destroyed each time, so this was a way to make multiple, identical molds for identical steel parts.

If so, then most likely the final metal part would be shaped like the outside of the wooden piece. Wooden patterns like this were typically used to make the sand molds. It was probably pieced together so that the wooden pattern would be dimensionally stable over time. If it had been made out of a single piece, the wood would have shrunk unevenly as it dried and become oval, if it had started out round.

Making patterns like this was a skilled trade, called a pattern-maker.

[cbotw27]

Thanks so much!!!

[sonomabarn67]

Great explanation.

[lacemaker3]

Thanks, @sonomabarn67!

My dad was an apprentice pattern-maker as a teenager. And I'm a graduate engineer, so I understand a lot more of what he did now, than when I was a kid.

[sonomabarn67]

Neat. Our granddad was an agronomist who started a research facility and we would play there after school. I think we would have been better behaved if we knew what he was up to! The plant is still open and thriving.

[mmadigan]

Some plants in California have been thriving for over 4000 years😃.

[soh.maryl]

In this case, a "plant" is a factory, not a growing thing.

So you know of factories that have been thriving for over 4,000 years, evidently before the discovery of America? Interesting.  

[sonomabarn67]

I don't think it was that old but the research facility was always referred to as the plant where liquid fertilizer was made to enhance farm crops.  I think we traced our family back to the Etruscans with the Vikings batting clean-up much later on but not 4000 years. I would say the usage of the word plant would be in line with the term manufacturing plant.

[mmadigan]

It was a play on words and  it seems to be a failed attempt at humor.  It was a plant started by a agronomist, thus was it a plant or a plant.

[sonomabarn67]

I thought it was funny.