Unknown Mold, Who Made It?

[Pressman]

Round ball with no sprue plate. About 69 caliber.

No slot cut for handles.

No numbers or name.

Drilled and tapped for two screws on diagonal corners of each block. What ever attaches would have to be a flat plate.

Appears to be fairly modern, not a vintage antique.

Pins are long, it has to fit flat, face to face, not on a hinged handle, and separated by pulling straight apart.

Ken

[John Boy]

That's an in process RB mold from a blank mold set of an unknown source. The pins are the give away and they are too long to close the mold if it had a set of handle

[EDG]

Maker is unknown but I don't think it is an in process mold.
Notice it has NO sprue plate and the sprue hole is manufactured as part of the mold blocks.

Someone made that thing to be used without handles- maybe just to be handled with gloves and some sort of clamp or vise. Operation would have been slow but a lot of people have the time and balls are not hard to cast especially a ball to be shot in a smooth bore musket.

If it was an in process mold an experienced maker would have cut the features for the handles into the blank block set. There is no use in cutting the handle slots and holes later. If you make a mistake later you scrap the cavity. The cavity is more difficult to make so you really do not want to take a chance of scrapping the cavity by goofing it up fitting handles.

[Pressman]

EDG, I agree. What it's purpose is I don't know. Just separating the blocks requires some precise alignment of some type of machinery.

[stubshaft]

Looks almost like a ball swaging tool.

[Pressman]

I had not thought of that, but it makes sense.