--- You wrote: This makes perfect sense when looking at fairly straight flanges, but what about those wacky angle blocks that we sometimes run into. The very first block I ever did was on a Bradbury that had a flange that slowly rolled from 90 degrees on the treble end to about 75 degrees at the horn. What possible design reason could there be for making a mold like this? John McKone, RPT --- end of quoted material --- John, I worked for several years as a patternmaker for a woodstove manufacturer here in Vermont. Patternmaking has its own set of rules, just as we have, to design pieces that will release cleanly from the sand mold. One of those rules is, the deeper the impression in the sand (that is, the higher the vertical wall of the piece coming out of the sand), the more draft angle required to get a clean release. So if the height of the flange changes, you can expect the patternmaker to have changed the angle as well, to make sure they pour a clean plate every time. This is pretty arcane stuff, but it is important to acknowledge how we bump up against other technologies in our work. A patternmaker certainly is not thinking about the ease of pinblock installation while designing a plate. He has his own set of problems to solve. Danny Dover, RPT Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
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