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I Forge Iron

help id'ing this thing


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I cannot add all that much other than conjecture but of one thing I am quite certain, it is has nothing to do with any sort of foundry process.  I have seen antique style molds for casting bronze flatware in actual use and they bear no resemblance to this item. Note there is no sprue arrangement at all, something that would be essential if it had anything to do with casting a part.

 

 As to it's actual use I have no idea.  The impression is so shallow I can't see what use it could be put to other than to make a light impression on a piece of sheet metal of some kind.  

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  • 5 weeks later...

I cannot add all that much other than conjecture but of one thing I am quite certain, it is has nothing to do with any sort of foundry process.  I have seen antique style molds for casting bronze flatware in actual use and they bear no resemblance to this item. Note there is no sprue arrangement at all, something that would be essential if it had anything to do with casting a part.
 
 As to it's actual use I have no idea.  The impression is so shallow I can't see what use it could be put to other than to make a light impression on a piece of sheet metal of some kind.

I cannot add all that much other than conjecture but of one thing I am quite certain, it is has nothing to do with any sort of foundry process.  I have seen antique style molds for casting bronze flatware in actual use and they bear no resemblance to this item. Note there is no sprue arrangement at all, something that would be essential if it had anything to do with casting a part.
 
 As to it's actual use I have no idea.  The impression is so shallow I can't see what use it could be put to other than to make a light impression on a piece of sheet metal of some kind.

Reseach one sided mold.
It could indeed be a permanent mold for any nonferrous metal being steel itself.
One sided molds need no sprues gating or vents.
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See lots of these out there in the antique trade. As others have said it is one half of a stamping die for a piece of silver or silver plate. There was a bankruptcy auction at Lunt Silver in Greenfield Mass several years. They stored thousands of these die sets in fireproof rooms to safeguard the huge investment they and their clients had in their development and manufacture. If I recall there were also separate dies to cut out silver blanks before the stamping process and maybe trimming dies as well to trim off the excess silver(flash) after the pieces had been stamped. So multiple die sets to produce one piece of a flatware set.


On edit I see that it is not exactly the same as the examples I've seen but I almost guarantee that it is somehow involved in the said flatware production. I see a chip in one of the corners which has me wondering whether it is cast iron although these dies are generally hardened tool steel which can chip as well.

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Reseach one sided mold.
It could indeed be a permanent mold for any nonferrous metal being steel itself.
One sided molds need no sprues gating or vents.

I don't need to research one sided molds.  This has nothing at all to do with any foundry process.  The impression is far too shallow for casting anything.  The fact that the impression runs right to the edge also means that anything molten that you poured into it would imply run out.  There is nothing to contain liquid metal.   It is far more likely to have something to do with a stamping process. 

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