CLICK HERE for Photographs of our
fittingsHi,
My name is Kathy Shaw,
My family has been in the foundry business for most of this century. My grandfather Lester Shaw Sr. was the lead molder for Kilgore foundry and toy company for several years prior to W.W.II.
He could produce more good parts then anyone else in the shop. He was the only one who could make some of the toy gun parts that had the small pins that needed to be smooth enough for the small springs to slide onto. He developed his "manual labor" work into and art, developing a method that allowed him to make castings no one else could!
Kilgore joined the war effort and switched from making caps and toys to making ammunition for the war, closing down the foundry part of the company. After the war Kilgore could not recover its place as the leading toy manufacture and eventually decided to close their doors on the plant in Westerville Ohio.
While being laid off from Kilgore during the war My Grandfather and a lead toy designer/pattern maker and part owner of Kilgore Ed Peak, started a foundry of their own, making small precision sand castings.
When Kilgore finally closed their doors in Westerville they had an auction. My father went and bought out much of Kilgore's equipment, sand, patterns, and a furnace. In the equipment were a couple of portable press molding machines that Ed Peak had designed and my grandfather helped to cast.
We still use this furnace molding machines and sand today to produce industrial castings, job shop work, art, and yes toys! In much the same way as Kilgore did nearly 3/4 of a century ago.
At the turn of the century the foundry business was bombing, it was a fairly common skilled manual labor. Molders could be found just about every where and hired to make the multitude of castings that supported the industry that was the backbone of this country.
However today hand sand casting is a dying art. We cannot hire anyone who knows how to do it because they don't exists. We must train some one from scratch. It takes at least 2 years for someone to learn enough of the basic skills that they can start earning us some money. It is a big investment to train someone how to manufacture natural sand castings.
For years we just did industrial work... but as time went by people would stop buy or call asking about toys and other antiques, specifically if we could hand make a part for an antique that was lost or broken. People who collected them wanted to complete their collections and could not find an undamaged original so they wanted to try and restore the damaged one. They thought that since we had the original equipment and sand that having us make it would be as close to the original as possible. So we made some parts. Some collectors were concerned that some people my be trying to pass off our castings for the older Kilgore ones but we assured them that we had no intention of deceptively presenting our castings as antiques. In fact we make our castings out of aluminum not iron very few of the old toys were made of aluminum. Even if someone painted them you could easily tell the weight difference. There is no way someone who knows anything about old toys could examine our castings and conclude they were original antiques.
Well the collectors liked the repair and replacement parts so much they started asking us to make complete toys to add to their collections while they were searching for the originals. So was born The Lester Shaw toy collection. He designed all the patterns by hand and I helped cast them using the same equipment and sand that the Kilgore toys had been made with in the 20's - 40's. People were so excited about them that we decided to produce them as collectibles.
We will custom make the toy for you and number and date it, and send you a certificate of authentication with the name of the original purchaser and the date they bought it. The certificate states that this is an original Shaw Collectible.
If you have an existing antique that you are interested in restoring please contact us.
TOLL FREE 1-888-738-5337.
Outside the USA 740-967-6147. We would be happy to help you .
FAX (740) 967-7730
LESTER SHAW 33O4 BEECH ROAD JOHNSTOWN OHIO 43031
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