A retired guy at the scrap yard changed how I look at old patterns

I was dropping off some sprues and scrap at the yard in Akron last fall, and an older man named Carl was sorting through a pile of old cast iron. He pulled out a broken gear pattern, all hand carved from wood, and just held it for a minute. He said, 'I made this one in '78. The draft angles are all wrong by today's books, but it poured perfect every time for a decade.' He pointed to a little notch he'd cut on the side, a trick he used to line it up in the flask. It hit me that so much of what we do isn't in the manuals, it's in the hands of the folks who did it before us. That beat up pattern had more real knowledge in its chewed up edges than a whole textbook. I started asking the old timers at my shop more questions after that. What's one little trick you learned from someone that you'd never find in a guide?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray6487h ago

Wait, he just found his own pattern from 1978 in a random scrap pile? That's wild luck right there.

alexj994h ago

Right? That kind of luck is insane. I once found an old toy of mine at a garage sale two towns over, felt like winning the lottery.