45) A New Business

During the time Jonny was having his health problems a friend from church approached us with a proposal. He is a ceramic engineer and he had been thinking for some time that he would like to develop a new product but as he was very busy at work he just did not have the time to do the research that it needed. He was looking for someone who would be prepared to source the ingredients and make up samples for testing. The product was to be used in the mining industry, to seal holes in worn metal pipes used in the industry temporarily so that production could continue until a more permanent repair could be done. He knew that there was a similar product on the market at the time but he was sure that he could make a better one if only he had the time. He asked if we would be interested in doing the groundwork and then mixing and packaging the product for sale once we got it right. He had a certain amount of money that he was prepared to put into the project and so he would pay us a living wage out of his pocket until the business was making money. The ceramics business that he had started had just been taken over by a large international company and he was very busy running the factory. He also thought that while we were doing the research Jonny could do a couple of little engineering jobs for his company to bring in some immediate income for the business. It all seemed so simple and our friend was so sure that it was a big money spinner we were very interested. Then when Jonny was sick and obviously could not continue to carry on lifting heavy parcels and climbing up long flights of stairs, it looked like a perfect opportunity, just at the right time.

We gave a months notice to companies that we were doing deliveries for and said a fond goodbye to all the lovely people that we had met during our time running Erina Deliveries. We were sad to be leaving most of them and tried to get someone else to take over the delivery run but could not find anyone who was interested.

Our partner gave us a very elementary course to explain to us what we were looking for and also told us about the frame he needed made up for a new kiln that he wanted for the factory and we set to work. While Jonny worked on the drawings for the kiln frame I started looking for the ingredients we needed. It was a bit of a problem as I was not very confident that I knew what I was talking about but I just pressed on, making dozens of phone calls and using the internet to try and obtain the ingredients. We did eventually with a great deal of help from all sorts of people manage to get some samples of the chemicals that our partner wanted. We mixed and poured and made samples out of different combinations of the chemicals and different resins. We timed how quickly they hardened and made comments on the texture of one against the other. This was interesting work and we really enjoyed it.

I also became an apprentice boilermaker and tried to help Jonny with his engineering work whenever I could. I was not a great help but at least I could hold the end of things or pass tools to him to help things go a little faster. Once we had finished the kiln frame Jonny designed and we built a machine to cut the profiles of moulds to manufacture the ceramic products that our partner was making in his factory. Our last engineering job was a grinding machine used to finish off the ceramic products. This machine needed to have a small steady flow of water pouring over the turntable that could be instantly turned off to prevent the product from getting too wet. It sounds simple enough but to bring the water up through the central shaft and not just pour back down that shaft gave Jonny a big headache but with trial and error he did eventually get it right and that machine was finished too.

The Grinding Machine

Meanwhile our samples had been made and sent to a laboratory in Victoria for testing. The results were very encouraging, the samples were so hard that the laboratory had to use harder grinding equipment to grind our product, as it was harder than anything else they had ever tested. The problem was the availability of the ingredients. We had obtained samples from local companies but to buy the product we would have had to buy a whole container load of each of the ingredients if we got it locally or from China. The only other alternative was to buy from America but the cost of shipping it to Australia would have made our product so expensive it would not have be competitive with the product that was already on the market even though it was so much better. So after a year we decided to wind up our company and look for something else to do.