Originally published at: Short Final: The 'Model T of the Skies?' - AVweb
Did Henry Ford eye Lawrence Sperry’s ‘flivver’ for production?
Sand blasting or sand casting? Sand casting makes a lot more sense to cast the cooling fins of a typical cylindar head. Sand blasting is to too uncontrolled to get even spacing and even thickness from fin-to-fin.
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“Sand casting” certainly seems a lot more likely. However, Page 229 of the book Gyro clearly says “sand blasting,” claiming to quote Sperry, directly. But in support of your point, that introduces two possible typos. Author William Davenport could have made a mistake, or it could have been Sperry, himself. A remote third possibility, since the distinction was between “machining” and “sand blasting” is that Henry Ford believed that the fins of a sand-casted cylinder could have been sufficiently refined by crude sand blasting, rather than precision machining.