Making the Mould

Stage 1: Make rough castings of a blank mould and engineer them into a complete, fitted mould assembly

The rough castings were machined and engineered by mould makers Tracy Youmans and Mike Harter, who can be seen in this set of photos.

Above: Tracy hard at work carrying out the milling.

Centre: one section of the mould is under the mill head having its joint created.

Above: two blank sections of the mould.

All the sections of the blank mould fit together.

Mike Harter working on the mould on the lathe.

Turning the top surface and the interior cavity.

Stage 2: Cut the "Flowers of the World" pattern in the mould. Over to Alan Van Dyke.

Alan is cutting the "Flowers of the World" pattern into the mould section using a pantograph (Deckel). 

Howard Seufer helped to explain: "The Deckel is a three-dimensional duplicating device.  A fast rotating cutter creates the design in the iron mould, following the pattern the tracer pin makes rubbing over the master.  

Various sizes of cutters and tracer pins are used to progressively create more precise design details, and the final work is done by hand at the mould maker's bench. Some moulds are still started by handwork first into one section of a multiple part mould."




The images below show (on the left), a close up of one of the mould sections being cut, and on the right, one section that has been completed, with another blank section waiting its turn

Continue the journey - Problem solving

How it began

The design

Plaster mock-up

Problem solving

Almost there

Success