Here at the shop, we mostly occupy ourselves with designing new products, making them, and getting them out the door. But, sometimes, we mix it up a bit. One of our local hotels placed an order for some of our new Oregon Spirit products – Go Ducks! – and needed some materials to put together a little display in their lobby. I wanted to offer up some pewter ingots – since that is how every product gets its start. But that would be a lot of money to just sit around in a display. So…I got the idea of making some miniature ingots. We brainstormed and decided that a Kit Kat bar was the closest thing we could think of to a miniature ingot.
So off I went to buy a LARGE Kit Kat bar (to allow for some munching throughout the project – of course!) and then gave the project to Dan to enjoy….
Kit Kat Bar - soon to become a miniature Pewter Ingot!
The first thing Dan did was to press one of the little bars into our sand mold…
Pressing the Kit Kat bar into the sand mold
He then removed the little bar and filled in the trench (that it had created) with molten pewter. I do not know why I didn’t photograph this step since pouring the molten pewter is the coolest part! But, to give you the idea, here is a ladle pouring pewter….(which melts at 450 degrees – yes! we wear thick leather gloves)…
Ladle of Molten Pewter
After casting the little ingot, Dan finished it with some shaping and sanding and VOILA!…the cutest little bar of Pewter!
Big and Little Ingots of Pewter
Nice job, Dan!
