Process
Wood craftsmen begin by making a model of the desired metal object from hardwood, using lathes, saws, and planes, which were all powered by the Knight Wheels. The model, called a pattern, is then placed in a casting flask, in its simplest form a topless and bottomless box split in half around its perimeter. The flask is placed on a board and a sand mixture (containing seacoal, bentonite clay, and pitch) poured and rammed around the pattern. The additives harden and stabilize the sand so that the flask can be split apart and the pattern removed leaving an exact impression or mold in the sand. The pattern can be reused almost indefinitely to create more molds in additional casting flasks. A channel or gate is left in the sand so that when the flask is rejoined, the ironworkers can pour the molten iron into it through the opening. When the iron has solidified the flask is broken apart, destroying the sand mold in the process, to reveal the rough casting.
Read more about this topic: Knight Foundry
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“come peace or war, the progress of America and Europe
Becomes a long process of deterioration—”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“A designer who is not also a couturier, who hasn’t learned the most refined mysteries of physically creating his models, is like a sculptor who gives his drawings to another man, an artisan, to accomplish. For him the truncated process of creating will always be an interrupted act of love, and his style will bear the shame of it, the impoverishment.”
—Yves Saint Laurent (b. 1936)