Official Luthiers Forum!

At my day job, we deal with some very large castings. Some are in the 30,000 lbs range when cast. I'm going down to the warehouse this weekend to help scrap some old patterns. I'm hoping to find some that have decent size pieces of HOG in them that I can use. Chances are there are too many pins in them and the boards used were too small to get two piece neck blanks out of, but anyone seen or used reclaimed wood from old sand casting patterns? I do hear they make a great bonfires.

I spent a couple years making molds and cores but the largest casting we did was oil pans for KW. Did a little pouring and shake-out also, HOT NASTY BRUTAL freakin work!

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We dont actually pour anything here. We just store our patterns. We just to design, assembly and test. We buy all parts and machining from outside sources. Seeing the people at the foundries we use work when its 100 deg outside makes me glad to be an office guy. I also visited the Kohler foundry about 10 years ago. Dirty nasty environment.

At any rate, I'm hoping to find some usable wood. I'll try to remember to take pics. But unless my account gets fixed, I wont be able to share them.

Even if they use the mahogany case just for storage of the molds or patterns I would find out what they use for the release agent of the part from the mold. We cast thousands of parts for our pumping units, gear gear blanks and gear cases out of cast iron, monel, cast steel and tungsten alloys. A product call Sure Release is our release agent. it is SILICONE. and it can and will likely be transferred to the storage cases. I would check to find out what your company uses before bring any thing home to your shop just for good measure.

Good thought Michael. I dont think there is any way to find out. Some of these are 75 years old and have been poured by many different foundries. Most are so big that there are no cases to hold them and require four semi trucks to transfer to and from a foundry.