I had one for a while. It was marked on the brass plate in the bottom, but I don't recall what it said. Also don't know the reasoning for using cast iron.
The tooling for a stretch-formed container is likely more expensive than a wood or plastic pattern for a sand casting. But the labor required to produce the sand casting is so much higher that the more expensive tooling for stretch-forming would pay for itself in just a few thousand containers.
Correct, so if someone wanted just a few hundred, the casting would make sense. I think there were foundries everywhere, and once you have a crucible full of molten iron, pouring more parts has little additional cost beyond the material itself.
.I think you are absolutely correct, considering the difficulty of producing the thin walled malleable casting, all the extra machining required, and the hand work of soldering the brass diaphragm I don't think a cast iron oiler could be produced cheaper than a stamped steel can. There has to be some reason other than cost for using cast iron. The can in the ad you posted was produced by Hammer and company using US patent 305305 which actually pertained to the two piece bottom which required a thicker body. The patent application states that the two piece bottom reduces the strain the soldered joint. Neither of my two cans have any markings and the larger has a lot of solder on the bottom suggesting it may have been repaired, and also that that one or both may have been made by someone other than Hammer and Co. I am attaching pictures of both cans and their bottoms, and just to liven up this discussion another similarly shaped steel can. The third one is made of steel, has a welded seam, no markings of any kind, and a machined spout. The seam suggests that it might have been a shop project.It doesn't matter how many foundries there are out there or if the iron is already melted and sitting in a crucible, the production of a sand mold, the trimming of the casting, and the finishing of the casting are all very labor intensive compared with production of a stretch formed part. The threads in the casting for the spout have to be machined, and I'd imagine machining is also required at the bottom, where the stamped pump section is attached.
That's why Henry Ford replaced castings and forgings with stamped parts in many of his early automobiles. He couldn't meet demand with the additional labor that the castings and forgings required.
You're probably right in that they're just old and pre-date common stamping processes. Here's an advertisement from 1888 for Malleable iron oilers produced in Connecticut. That would predate common stamping processes by a few years.
Doubtful.
I used to use a lot of c clamps as welding clamps and have had a lot of them marked "Malleable" with and without a manufacturers name. I think in most cases "Malleable" simply refers to the malleable iron material. Malleable iron was made by holding the cast object at a high heat for a long time to burn off some of the excess carbon, it worked very for thin cross sections but not so well for thicker ones.
Correct. The term "Malleable iron" wasn't a Hammer exclusive. It was used by a number of manufacturers.
Did you ever find a patent number for the Hammer & Co. C clamp? The 128064 James Phillips patent I saw was for a clamping table. I have one of these clamps but the patent date was to worn to read. Anyway your post helped me identify what company made the clamp. Thanks Paul Choonks13
choonks13 said:
