I suppose despite any preparation work you do prior to starting a new business, the learning curve doesn’t really start until after you have hung out your shingle. So it was with Desert Crucible.
Early on, we took in any work we could get, and we bent over backwards to accommodate potential customers, no matter how unusual the job. We needed the money.
One of our early efforts that fit this category immediately comes to mind. It involved, of all things, a cannon barrel.
The customer brought in a muzzle-loading, black powder-fired, ceremonial cannon with a barrel about three feet in length. He wanted us to make a rubber mold of the barrel, so that we could make wax duplicates that he could use in the lost wax process to cast brass replicas of the barrel. No problem. Mold made. First wax duplicate provided.
As are so many entrepreneurs, he was long on ideas and short on cash. He wanted us to cast the first replica in brass, but he balked at our price quote for doing so. He asked if we could lower our price if he provided the brass for us to use in the casting. We negotiated a price that deducted our cost of metal, and we proceeded to prepare the wax for burnout and casting.
On casting day, he arrived with his wash tub filled with scrap brass. Keep in mind that we were to put the scrap into a crucible, melt it to a liquid a temperature of about 2150 degrees centigrade, and pour it into the ceramic shell containing the impression of the wax barrel.
We took one look into his wash tub of scrap brass and immediately began our “No way, José” dance. The scrap brass was small arms ammunition casings that had been collected from a firing range, and the collection contained misfires and even some live rounds that still had the projectiles in place!
I have no idea what his thought process was, but I am still impressed with the image of the fireworks that would have occurred with live rounds going off in a crucible of molten metal.
He reluctantly agreed to our original price using our own source of brass.
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