Cope and Drag Version 1.1

I'm still having all kinds of trouble with my greensand mix and getting effective molds. (Spoiler alert: I finally broke down and ordered some Petrobond. More on that later....) But, in the meantime, I have rammed the flasks I built a while back enough to realize there are a couple of things about them that annoy the crap out of me about them.

To start with, here is how they looked up until tonight.

The 3/8" strip around the center seemed like a good idea initially to help hold the sand in place. In practice though, it really gets in the way when you're trying to ram the sand. I don't think it's necessary and, in the future versions, I'll probably route out grooves as opposed to using a projecting piece of stock. So the first step was to bust those out.

I've also realized these flasks are a bit smaller than I intended. There isn't anything I can do about that directly but I can convert them into snap flasks. This configuration might even turn out to be even more useful for the projects I have planned. 

In order to do this though, I had to remove the screws but also bust them apart. As I mentioned in the original post, I overbuilt them just a tad which included gluing all mating surfaces in addition to the mechanical fasteners.

A few aggressive minutes with a hammer, nail bar, and a 7-in-1 tool and they were apart without too much damage.

Then it was just a matter of installing the hardware. Now before you say it, I wasn't trying to be fancy by using brass. Surprisingly, they were the same price as the galvanized steel ones.

Several minutes later and v1.1 is done.