REPORT
The varnish pot has legendary status within Boon & Lane. It is still being used every day
you put 700°C of molten aluminium onto damp sand, it will just explode off it and your casting will be destroyed.”
Blocking
Boon & Lane don’t just produce aluminium hat blocks; they also sell pressing machines to use them on. The stock they have are the final bits of a large collection gathered by Peter Lane over the years. Steve says: “My father bought an awful lot of pressing machines during his time in the company, and we are still selling those. They are made from cast iron, very heavyweight and solid enough to take the blocking process. People often don’t really realise how much of a hammering these blocking machines get. You can buy lesser versions of this type of machine in a prefabricated steel as well, but they tend to break. The aluminium blocks themselves very rarely wear out. We have seen one or two broken ones over the years, because the manufacturer had run these flat out all the time for years. But normally it’ll be the style that rules the end of the block’s life, because it goes out of fashion.” As an alternative to the large pressing machines, Boon & Lane developed a smaller home studio version for milliners who might get orders for ten or twenty copies of one of their designs. “Our aluminium blocking set is a smart addition to home blocking and a lot faster. You can connect a camping gas bottle to it and get started. Within five minutes you go from a cold block to a blocked hat. When you use a big pressing machine, you need to have enough space to store it somewhere and you have to deal with fire regulations. With this smaller set, you can just work in your backyard; all you need is some ventilation.”
The oven
Over the years an impressive number of blocks has been created in the workroom. “The number system started on 100 because when my father first started he wanted to make it look like he’d already been producing a bit. At the moment, we’re at number 10,200 or so and these are all individual shapes. We did have another building where we saved the plaster blocks, but at some point we threw thousands of them out. The thing is, the trade has changed. We were keeping those because we thought that people would want to reorder them. Well, that doesn’t happen so much. Nowadays, everyone wants something new, something with a twist or something different, and that’s what it’s got to be.”
More information
www.hatblockstore.co.uk
Casting moulds
Boon & Lane's home studio version of the aluminium block set
The pressing machine
When the plaster
model is removed from the sand mould box, Boon & Lane’s details are stamped into the sand. To be able to
cast these fine details, a bit of oil-based sand is used around the
spot where the pattern will be stamped
may 2023 | 51
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