Pewter

Set off at 9plus heading towards the Royal Selangor Pewter Company. At the entrance, there was a giant goblet made entirely outta pewter. It was in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest something which I don't know.
Now this company is not overnment owned, instead, it was a family buisness. At the entrance to the exhibition, there was a huge wall with lots of hand prints carved out from pewter. Those were the hand prints of the workers who have worked in the ompany fro more than 5years.
Pewter is made up of:

• Tin


• Antimony


• Copper

90% of Tin is usually added, though this may be different in the types of products manufactured. Pewter was traditionally made up of Tin and Lead, but with Lead being poisonous, pewter in those days were not food-safe. So, today, the elements used to make pewter are different.

In another part of the exhibition room, there was a massive wall made entirely up of pewter plates, each plate costing as much as RM 150. Every single plate was designed by hammering of carving out the patterns. There was even a replica of the Petronas Twin Towers, made up of 7000 pewter tubes. It was standing at least 3 storeys high!

It was said that when shaping out the pewter, metal scraps are wasted and there were these words on the wall 'No pewter goes to waste'. In the middle of the exhibition room, there was a huge hollow cube with pewter scraps packed inside. It actually weighed 1500kg and that amount of pewter can be made 1400 teapots!

Outside the exhibotion room, there was a big factory that could be viewed from close by a ramp leading down. One worker was making handles for the teapots by pouring molten pewter inside a mould and opening it up a 2 seconds later. Bingo! A handle slipped out like magic! It cooled so fast that any spillage onto the table solidified in to coin like metal. Then, the worker would dip the handle into the molten pewter and use the heat to 'chop' off the ends so that the unwanted ends would become molten again, without any wastetage.

In another part of the exhibition room, there was a worker imprinting patterns into a sheet of pewter, which would then we soldered and made into a limited edition tea set, cosing 8000RM.

In a corner of the factory, there was a 'School of Hard Knocks', teaching you pewter smithing. We attended the course which taught us how to transform a circular piece of pewter, into an ice cream bowl. It took half an hour and we even got to imprint our initials on the bottom of the bowl.

Another room we visited was the showroom, we showcased the products the company manufactured. The prices ranged from a 50RM teacup to a 172kRM Peacock. Most of the pewter products were handmade, so its the workmanship fee we were paying for.

It rained and we went back to hotel LOL