Permenant fix? was RE: Cracked Plate

[David Vanderhoofven]

Hi Alan,

Here is an ignorant reply to your ignorant question.  The problem of 
creating a mold of the plate and then casting a new plate from the mold is 
that the casting will shrink.  Then you will end up with a plate that is 
too small to work.

A few years ago I talked with a man here in Joplin who worked in the past 
as a mold maker, for making cast metal items.  To make the mold, you have 
to take exact measurements of the item that you are making.  Then you make 
a duplicate of that item but larger by an exact amount.  Then you make a 
mold of the larger duplicate.  When you finally have the mold, then you 
pour the molten metal into the mold, and as it cools down, it will 
shrink.  Hopefully it will be the exact size that you wanted.  If not, you 
have to make another duplicate and try again.

Different types of metal have different shrink rates as they cool 
down.  The mold would have to be larger by differing amounts depending on 
the type of metal being cast.

The short answer is, I don't think that you could make a mold of the plate 
and cast a new plate without the plate being too small and unusable.

David Vanderhoofven
Joplin, MO

At 10:28 AM 6/23/2005, you wrote:
>Here's an ignorant question? What are the possibilities of using an old
>plate to creat a sand mold and recasting the succor? Are there places that
>could/would do that?
>
>Alan Barnard
>Salem, Missouri