BSR question/discovery... maybe?

JaredS

Member
So I recently posted pic of this #8 pan and lid:

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Here is the inside of the lid (bare metal):

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The skillet is marked like a Red Mountain, and the lid certainly is Red Mountain. I found the combo in a junkyard under a dumpster covered in rust and was excited to restore them. When I posted a picture of the skillet, Doug felt that it was a late Red Mountain or early Century made after automation was introduced at BSR. I have since been on the lookout for a matching #8 for the lid.

The key thing that dated my skillet as post automation was the size of the pour spouts. There are a plethora of BSR pans here locally, and I have handled many #8s (not hundreds, but many), and not found any with large spouts. I've also googled images of Red Mountain pans and only found one pan that was listed a while back on ebay that appeared to have larger spouts. I was a little discouraged, thinking it was going to be tougher to find a mate for the lid than I anticipated.

Since then I have purchased a BSR #5 pan and another #8 which I cleaned up and gave to a friend just today. While handling this #8 I had the opportunity to closely compare it to mine, and I found some interesting things. First, the pan I gave away was much heavier and had much thicker walls. The pan also had a turned out, thicker lip, much like a blended reinforced lip. My pan has a reinforcing ring running around the lip, but it is not blended, nor is it very tall (only 5-6 mm or so).

I noticed something else: the pan I gave away was thicker on one side than the other. See here:

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If you look handle side of the spouts, you will notice that the left hand lip is significantly larger than the right hand lip. This is not just in the walls. I didn't have a caliper to check, but it was obvious from pinching about half way down the sidewall that one side was significantly thicker than the other.

Curious at this discovery, I checked my #5:

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The same! The photos can play tricks on your eyes and make you think the thickness is an optical illusion, but trust me it is not. The difference in thickness between each side of the pan walls is not subtle.

So now the question. Is this coincidence, or a documented eccentricity of BSR pans? Does it have something to do with the way the patterns were made? If this is not simply an accident, does it point to the pans being of the post automation type, or pre-automation?

By the way, the #8 that I have (the first one pictures) does not have this peculiar idiosyncrasy. The walls of this pan are even all the way around the circumference and much thinner than in the second #8 pictured. I tend to believe that the two pans were made one either side of introduction of automation at BSR. I have no proof of this, just gut feeling. Neither have the large poor spout, but the differences between the two pans are very pronounced, and in my opinion are more significant than between two pans with slightly different sized and/or shaped spouts. Perhaps I am wrong and the two pans just exhibit normal variation within an automated production line, but coupling the above information with the fact that I found the pan with a Red Mountain lid leads me to believe that my pan is in fact of the pre-automation period.

I'd love to hear everyone's take on this; also, if you have pics of a #8 BSR pre-automation Red Mountain skillet, I'd love to see them and see how they compare to both skillets I have handled at length. Thanks!
 
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In the automated molding system used typically for hollowware, the patterns are on what's called a match plate. The patterns aren't just a master version of the pan that gets buried and packed in sand in a two part box and then removed. One side of the match plate has the bottom of the pan on it, the other the top. The plate is inserted into a chamber, sand is injected on either side of it, and opposing rams compact the sand against the pattern plate. If the two halves of the sand mold don't align perfectly after the plate is removed and they are pushed back together, you sometimes get this offset or eccentricity.

http://www.castironcollector.com/automation.php
 
EDIT: After doing some more image browsing, I think that it might be the reverse of what I felt before. Many of the Century pieces I'm seeing seem to have the unblended reinforced lip. However, handing both pans I really felt the quality of mine was better. The skillet is lighter, thinner, and in general just feels to be better produced. If that was the result of moving to automated processes then I understand why they did it! However, I had read here the opposite in regards to the thickness of the pans (that the older Red Mountains tended to have thinner walls or at least lips), and so now I am truly confused. Help appreciated!
 
I realized that I did not have a "standard" image of my #8, so snapped one when I got home.


As you can see, the walls are much thinner than on the other 8 I posted a pick of. So, final verdict? Are both pans from post automation? Or are they from opposite sides of the Rubicon?
 
Although technically "Red Mountain" style markings, the rest of the characteristics appear post-automation.
 
Here's pics of my BSR Red Mountain #8, which I believe to be pre automation. Due to larger spouts and the 8 appearance on back. I also have Red Mtn skillets w/tiny spouts, I would assume as post auto. Hope pics Help.
 

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