My name is Jack and this was my second year participating at the TREP$ Marketplace at Memorial Middle School in Cedar Grove. I am a 6th grade student from the Memorial Middle School of Cedar Grove. Last year, I made and sold silly putty. It was called Nuclear Slime because of the neon colors.
This year I wanted to do something more challenging so I created a company called Master Metal Crafts and I came up with the idea to make aluminum medallions with the logo of my favorite game console, Xbox. The idea came to me when I was watching YouTube. First, I thought I was going to be able to melt recycled aluminum cans and use a homemade charcoal furnace like I’ve seen in the YouTube video. But that did not turn out well. The aluminum cans did not yield too much metal and the charcoal furnace was not hot enough.
I ended up using aluminum ingots and a homemade gas furnace to melt the metal.
For the mold, I used a sand box and stamped the Xbox logo on it. Once the metal was melted, it was poured into the mold and after it cooled I had a medallion. In order to speed up the process, I stamped 3 logos at once. I was able to make about 35 medallions. My dad helped me a lot, especially buying the materials, helping me build the furnace and pouring the melted metal into the mold.
At the TREP$ Marketplace, I sold half of my medallions at $8 each. I know it was more expensive than other items sold at TREP$, but it also cost more money to make them. A lot of people thought it was very cool. Next year I will probably make other metal products that I will be able to have at different prices. I’ve learned that sometimes we need to have invest more money in the beginning of a business but it will pay off when you can have products at different prices.
I cannot wait until next year to make more metal crafts!
