true morph, but your time has to be worth a little something.........

Also it should be moted that the molds will be made of wood.

Wow, if you can get the casting to work out let us know. I will have to relook into it. If he can keep the metal quality high after it is melted and poured then you should be in good shape. I never though about pressure casting. Good luck!! That block looks great.

it'd need to be smooth wood if the mold didn't turn out grainy

Out of curiosity...how would wooden molds handle 1000+C of molten copper?

I worked in an alum. rim factory/foundry one summer, back in high school. All those castings were poured into a ceramic looking mold.

The molds are pressed into casting sand, then removed. They are revirse molds. the sand then holds the pattern and the molten copper is poured into the sand. When the copper hardens, the sand it broken away.

Correct, but that would be normal casting. I checked with my friend and it's combination of preasure/vacuum casting, and model is from hss steel (used for tools) and the cost of making that model would be around 700$ ,but then I can use it practicaly unlimited time, so I cover my cost at less than 100 blocks. Which at that price shouldn't be to hard.
Anyway first I must finished my last 50days in the army and than I'll have a lot more time to play with this.