Here's a lovely stove courtesy of a good pal and kind gentleman, Alexander, who has given his permission to post these pictures. It's hard to imagine a finer example of this particular stove.
A beauty! Lovely bit of cast iron, reminds me of Gran's gas stove C1930. Thank your friend for the view - lovely.
thats fantastic! i wonder what the percentage was for castings that made the grade! what year was that made? need a place to store it? 8-[ , i thought not.
I bet it was pretty high. I think we've probably lost a lot of casting skills that we had in first half of the 20th century. Mechanisation has removed a lot of the manual skills that were employed to produce complex decorative castings such as this.
Graham: Indeed, and the skill of the pattern maker who carved the original from mahogany or rosewood, or the molders who created a sand mold for each casting. The Primus 121 is an attractive casting. In the current casting process for complicated castings like engine blocks, I've heard that the patterns are made of a material like styrofoam. The halves of the molds do not have to be seperated to remove the pattern, and the styrofoam is vaporized by the hot metal and the gases are driven out the waste gates as the metal fills the void. Paul
Thin wall casting is not easy - harder still when sand cast - and the decorative nature of the pattern used would make it even more difficult to acheive - But on the "plus" side for the foundrymen the amount of casting failures would be reduced as the higher failure rate would be in the moulding department as the pattern "dragged" the moulding sand as it was released from the mould prior to the actual casting taking place . Any failed castings , flash & moulding sprues would be added to the next charge to be melted down for the next set of castings to be poured .
