[GTO-relic]

old thread, here's the thing...
the guys that used to make the cylinder head molds for Pontiac and GM,
were true artisans, and craftsmen, in the old world sense.
to make a sandcast mold for the heads,
they first had to make a rough cylinder head from wood,
then that wooden head is used, to make the sandcast,
then the sandcast is assembled into a mold,
and the molten iron poured in.
the exterior as-cast surfaces you see on the exhaust side,
were first HAND WHITTLED from a block of wood.
that's why they look so cool, all those shapes in the porting,
interior and exterior.
so, they made a head from wood,
made a sandcast around it,
then assembled the sandcast mold, by hand,
then poured the molten iron in, to fill in the space,
where the wooden head was before.
that's what gave the Pontiac heads that cool adobe look.
because, in reality, they were adobe.
cast iron, hand crafted adobe.
these guys made like 7 bucks an hour or so back in the old days.
you can't afford it today. it's 85-100 bucks an hour or more.
just to make a mold, that gets destroyed to make a cylinder head.
you'd have to get 10 grand per head to make them that way today,
just for the bare head.
so in reality, RA II IV V HO SD heads, are a bargain today.
be happy you can even find them, and buy them.
want a head that looks like that ?
then make a mold from an original head, and pour it.
stop trying to improve it.
if you find King Tut's coffin, or the Holy Grail,
you don't try to improve it. you preserve it.
if you find the Mona Lisa painting,
you don't try to touch it up to make it look better.
that completely destroys its value.