“It’s yellow,” answered his uncle, “when we begin to use it, but the action of the hot iron, as we use it, over and over, turns it black.”
Then came the work that Billy had waited so long to see.
Uncle John took a wooden frame—he called it a drag—which was about two feet square and not quite so deep. He put it on a bench high enough for him to work easily. Then he laid six cutters for a corn canning machine, side by side, in the bottom of the box.
“Those,” he said, “are patterns.”
Taking a sieve—a riddle—he filled it with moist sand which he sifted over the cutters. Next, with his fingers, he packed the sand carefully around the patterns. Then, with a shovel, he filled the drag with sand, and rammed it down with a wooden rammer until the drag was full.
“Now,” said he, taking up a wire, “I am going to make some vent holes, so the steam can escape.”
When that was done, he clamped a top on the box, turned it over, and took out the bottom.
Billy could see the cutters, bedded firm in the sand.
Blowing off the loose sand with bellows, and smoothing the sand around the pattern, Uncle John took some dry sand, which he sifted through his fingers, blowing it off where it touched the cutters.
“This sand,” he said, “will keep the two parts of the mold from sticking together.”