TheTiddles
Established Member
Oh, this thing about “seasoning” castings… well, people used to have to do that because they couldn’t model the stresses from the casting process, in fact a lot of old machines are a terrible design for staying flat, it’s 1st year course stuff now to avoid the way they were designed, long transverse ribs connected to flanged edges etc… they’re a shrinkage nightmare.
You can make a perfectly strong and flat surface with a lot less metal if you design it right, so they now do. The first British jet engines had to use huge billets of steel to get a small central section that was uniform, because metallurgy just wasn’t what it is now, the Germans did a much better job in many respects. In a way it’s similar to cast cannon barrels, everyone made them with reinforcing hoops around to make them stronger, just like they built up barrels made from staves, in fact it did the opposite, but that’s how it was always done, so they carried on doing it… for literally centuries.
You can make a perfectly strong and flat surface with a lot less metal if you design it right, so they now do. The first British jet engines had to use huge billets of steel to get a small central section that was uniform, because metallurgy just wasn’t what it is now, the Germans did a much better job in many respects. In a way it’s similar to cast cannon barrels, everyone made them with reinforcing hoops around to make them stronger, just like they built up barrels made from staves, in fact it did the opposite, but that’s how it was always done, so they carried on doing it… for literally centuries.
you're going to need the cash for shipping that big beauty all the way to Aussie land 
