Concrete block machine

     Many decades ago, my father brought this machine home. It's a homemade machine to make concrete blocks, one at a time. It apparently came from a local concrete company, the founder's first venture into the concrete business many, many years ago.

 It's a pretty well thought out unit. The machine has a single chamber that makes a 10" block on its side,  The mixed concrete is trowelled in from the rear tray. The four plungers shown in the image below pack the concrete between the removeable cores. A board is located at the front and becomes the tray for the block to rest on to cure as the cores are retracted, using the large handle on the right hand side. The tray is rotated 90° forward, the sideflaps also rotated out of the way, so someone can carry the block and tray away to cure.

  We never used it, but I can imagine that the process would go quickly once a work pattern was worked out.

  But imagine. A business based on one block at a time. It belongs in a museum. 

As Jack points pout in the comments, it may be a commercial unit, Sears Roebuck had a 50 page catalog on concrete making equipment.