12/16 pesky lil #%^

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by GregAndrew

My point was that it is not likely that the makers paid high dollar for the fine mold making that you refer to (they are not producing these for rocket sceintists)

The die making process is by it's nature is accurate, as the whole point, the whole reason the process exists, is to make a mold that produces an accurate duplication of the product in mass. I mean they cast carb bodies and all kinds of things this way. This type of project would be a piece of cake to a die-maker, a real no brainer. There is no way they would screw it up if they knew what they were doing. Basically anyone with enough skill to make the die is going to make an accurate die with a project like this one.

Originally Posted by GregAndrew

On closer examination of the same jigs, you can see differences between the 2 Lite 6Xs (jigs #3 and #5). The holes on either end of the one on the left are larger than the one on the right. There is also a difference in the Ss on either end of "SALAS".

Holes are notorious for flash where a small amount of metal seeps out and fills the space, I imagine they have to drill those out and clean them out during the chasing phase. Having done a shitload of chasing I imagine that those holes vary in size do to available tooling..LOL

In other words they probably use whatever drill bit they have sitting around that's still sharp at any given moment, on any given day.

With any kind of casting the chasing (cleanup) always creates idiosyncrasies, but that's not a reflection of the mold so much as the hand of whoever is doing the cleanup. It's a constant battle with chasers, they love to use their tools, and sometimes it's hard to convince them that less is more, as the less you chase (sand, drill or grind off) the more of the original remains.

I think those discrepancies your seeing in the S can be attributed to thickness in finish. To me it's rather obvious the finish is a built up a little thicker on the left side of the number five jig where it's more even on three. Essentially human error. That buildup was caused by someone spraying it multiple times trying to get the color break right on that side.

You can see the another thickness of finish issue in the new mold number two jig where the J in JR almost disappears because it tends to fill in. That's a design flaw, when they figured out the letter placement they did not take into account the sag in the thicker finishes during curing.

That exact issues shows up in the majority of jigs cast from that mold. Since they cure them front up the J being the highest letter takes a hit.

Jim