After all the hard work.....what a beautiful thing to see all those FIRST EDITION Australian-made AUSFonte(TM) pans coming HOT off the 'shakedown' conveyor today!
They pour fast (up to 800 per hour) and therefore come fast off the shakedown conveyor (where the sand moulds are disintegrated for reclamation and the pans removed from their trees). Now the hard work begins......
In previous updates we showed video of exactly how fast these pans pour, in pairs, but we haven't shown yet how much work goes into taking each pan from what you see in the picture to what you receive ready for cooking. We'll post more pics and video when we have them, but you can imagine the frantic activity now to trim all the seams, semi-manually sand the cooking surface of each pan (see previous update on the work we put into achieving the smoothest cooking surface in modern bare cast iron), then pre-season food safe and ready for cooking.
Despite all that hard work, we're still on target for shipping out to our Kickstarter backers by end of October, and that's a real testament to the skill and dedication of everyone at our world-class Australian foundry. We greatly appreciate all your efforts!
The eagle-eyed among you will notice a little addition to the handle branding......
Before production we quickly made a modification to our moulds to add 'AUS' in front of the existing 'fonte' brand on our LOVE HANDLES to create AUSfonte. It's a long story, but in brief we wanted a 'more Australian name' as requested by a lot of our supporters, and we wanted to be sure to avoid confusion with any other, say, cheap imports who might want to trade off the 'fonte' name (which is also French for 'cast iron', so harder to protect in trademark law....yes, long story). We love the result: more Australian and more protection for our hard work developing Australia's only professional production cookware!
We know all our Kickstarter backers are excited about receiving their FIRST EDITION pans. We've had a lot of people ask to order one after Kickstarter closed, but we've had to politely decline, because, as promised, these historic FIRST EDITION pans are only available to Kickstarter backers: the ones who put their faith, and real money, behind our vision to create this new cookware industry for Australia. We are forever grateful.
It isn't too late to order an AUSfonte pan though: we will soon go into production for our retailers, who will receive their stock in November. They won't be 'First Edition' but they will be cast with 'CAST XX/XX/14' with the actual cast date. Not the same as 'First Edition', but still valuable collectible heirlooms in the coming years and centuries.
So tell your friends who missed Kickstarter that they can still place pre-orders for AUSfonte pans with our main online retailer: http://www.kitchenwaredirect.com.au/SOLIDTEKNICS-Fonte-Cast-Iron-Deep-Sauteuse-Pan-24cm
Thank you all again for turning our vision into a reality!!
Mark, Rebecca, Natasha and the SOLIDTEKNICS Team.