Patent Pending...

[ysageev]

Cool.  I wish I understood the casting process perfectly.  It still is a bit murky.  I keep hearing words like pattern, mold, brass master, sand, tamper.  I'm having trouble visualizing every step.  A diagram would be great.  

It seems like a ghost would help date a given piece of iron precisely, since the skillet would have to have been manufactured at the intersection of the pattern lifetimes.  In other words, (random dates) EPU: 1920 - 1930, SlantLogo: 1928-1940 implies my skillet: 1928-1930.  If the transition was rapid then the manufacture date would be at the boundary. :-?

[Steve_Stephens]

Yair ye, Yair ye, now listen up; do a Google for iron casting and you will come up with pages such as this:
http://www.narrowgauge.iform.com.au/foundry.html
which give a pretty good idea of how iron cookware was made.

We don't really know when companies changed from one pattern style or markings to another.  For the most part we can get to within maybe 10 years time frame or even closer in some cases but it's still a guess.  Dates in many of the books on iron cookware are not always right or even close.  I think we would all like to be able to date our pieces to within a year or two but I don't think that will ever happen so we'll have to go on using circa dates.  Even a companies' catalogs usually don't show the markings used on their pans for the period of the catalog.  And some catalogs illustrated older versions of their products.

Steve

[ysageev]

Yair ye, Yair ye, now listen up; do a Google for iron casting

Yeah, yeah -- "use google you lazy *ss!"   ;D

 :P

Very interesting link Steve and it answers tons of questions, although it raises others.  From the process in the link it makes me wonder how it could have lent itself to mass production.  It looks like the sand would want to shift constantly and the care necessary to move it around seems painstaking.  How could the price of a skillet have been affordable if the sand had to be repacked every time?  Do they use a special sand that doesn't shift?
 8-)

[ysageev]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_casting

[Roger Barfield]

It looks like the sand would want to shift constantly and the care necessary to move it around seems painstaking.  How could the price of a skillet have been affordable if the sand had to be repacked every time?  Do they use a special sand that doesn't shift?

They did use a special sand, and it was a special mixture that was used over and over.  Once the sand mold is busted, that sand is used to make another.  Also, each mold could be used for more than one piece  based on the size of the item being cast.  Here are some photos for you that are from the Lodge foundry tour we took during our last convention.   These are a few of hundreds that are avialable in the members area.  
.

[Roger Barfield]

These are just busted out of the sand molds and are headed for cleaning and polishing.  The small strips of  iron are the gates that have been snapped off right out of the mold.

[Steve_Stephens]

 Also, each mold could be used for more than one piece based on the size of the item being cast.

What Roger is saying is that a single mold could turn out more than one piece in that, say, three little skillets or ashtrays might be cast all together in the mold and then broken apart.  A mold can only be used one time  but what it makes is determined by what's on the pattern.  The Lodge pattern Roger shows has the camp oven bottom on the right side and a grill grate on the left.  That's one pattern which, when a mold is made from the pattern, will turn out two different (they could easlily be the same piece or even more different pieces) items from the one mold.  But that mold is destroyed when the pieces are removed from it.

Casting sand has some oil and maybe other ingredients in it to help hold it together.  Remember that labor used to be relatively cheap.  Lodge no longer hand molds but everything is automated and a mold is pressed out every 10 seconds roughly and heads right down the conveyor line.  If you join WAGS we have photos of the Lodge tour where the foundry was in operation and of the Wagner tour where the foundry had been sleeping for several years but was sitting just as it shut down around 1999 with pieces in their molds still on the conveyor and both finished and unfinished pieces stacked in bins all over the place.  Both were very interesting tours.  It pays to become a WAGS member.

Steve

[ysageev]

You guys are awesome.  I will mail the check and membership form tomorrow.

[Fusion_power]

Birmingham Stove & Range had a long history of making cookware as well as stoves in their earlier years.  The standard mark is the unique "V" on the bottom of the handle.  Take a look at your cornbread skillet and note that there is not a hole completely through the center (lodge has a hole) and the handle has the "V" shape which they claimed was designed for comfortable handling.


Here is a piece with some rather interesting claims.  This is one part to a 2 piece double skillet.  Its rather clutzy in shape and  very heavy.  The guy claims it was made by Centric in Birmingham but this may just be a misnomer for Century.  Anyone know for sure?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6256566587

[Steve_Stephens]

Darryl, I just saw the Centric piece but have no idea of the maker.  Yes, he must have meant Century but that is only a brand name and not a company.

Steve