Angle 33 Wine Thermals Break the Mold

Part of the blessing and the curse of coming up with an original idea, is that no one has made a mold for it, yet. Believe me, I tried to use something pre-fabricated, but none of them produced consistent results. For Angle 33, consistency is key and concrete is such a volatile medium, it’s hard enough to replicate results.

Third time’s the charm??  Not usually.

I won’t bore you by describing my every attempt at finding the right mold over the past 18 months, but yes, it took more than three.  For a good year, I spent many an evening hunched over the work counter for so long that the dust seemed to settle on me. There were mornings when Marge would have to reel me back into my seat at the breakfast table, because my head was still in the shop. Sometimes it was frustrating, but here we are; each step led us closer to the current form that makes Angle 33 Wine Thermals look good, every time. At least we were headed in the right direction.

That entire time, my goal was to have a 100% re-usable form that also consistently produces high quality thermals.  What I found through this process is that nobody is as particular as the entrepreneur.  Everything had to work perfectly, or as close to perfect as possible.  There were many times in which I thought we had found the solution, only to find out the form had some flaw and just wasn’t going to work.

I have been playing with concrete for long enough to understand it as much as it can be understood.  What I mean by that, is we learn something new about concrete on a daily basis.  Since we can only control certain factors, we ALWAYS make sure the tangibles are taken care of.

You may or may not know this, but the look of concrete is only as good as the form it is poured in.  So to be able to have re-usable molds for thermals and use the same molds, for over a year—with no need for replacements—is an accomplishment I am very proud of.  The easy way out would be to purchase new molds each time and throw out the old ones.  I didn’t say that is economical or sustainable, but considering this rule of concrete, it may be the most logical option to others.

This process reminded me why people don’t mass-produce quality concrete products with a nice finish. In our case, our handcrafted thermals are produced from handcrafted molds. These are the details I can live with.

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