I am now becoming more involved in our casting process. And by more involved, I mean that I am doing a casting once a week. My whole casting setup had been in my basement, and even though it was handy, the cons outweighed the pros. So I decided to do what I love to do. Build a workshop. I am proud to say that Wexford Jewelers now has its own fully functional casting and molding workshop! This is what I have always dreamed of. Working in a self sufficient jewelry shop. You see, before, everything had been here and there.. wax carving in the dining room, casting the basement, molding on the kitchen counter, finishing at our jewelry store, and selling them in 5 locations at times! And me being the organization guru I am, this drove me crazy. We would transport bags and trays of jewelry back and forth to places. We would transport wax carvings from home to work, hours of intricate detailed work being sent through the mail. Praying that nothing would freeze and break, or get too hot and lose shape. NOT ANYMORE! Wexford Jewelers is proud to say that all services are now in house. And not only are they in house, they are fully functional. Yes that’s right, I did my first casting this morning. And it went flawless. One of my main concerns was proper ventilation seeing that we are a brick and mortar jewelry store, so we had Able Heating and Cooling (a local business here) custom build and install a large enough hood and fan system to adequately ventilate any nasty smoke and fumes that are produced from the casting process. I have to admit, I was a little concerned that it was going to utterly fail, and that $850 that we spent for the system would be wasted, but I was pleasantly surprised to walk in the back room this morning after a full night of the burnout process, to only smell the smell of the fresh cut wood that I used to build the benches from. I love that smell. I am a builder at heart. But this is the absolute next best thing, and as long as I can build a bench or shelf here and there, you will never hear me complain.