Santiam Bronze Works: Written Press

Last November, he founded Santiam Bronze Works in Lebanon, starting it in a large outbuilding on his property using a furnace built from a recycled water heater and an electric leaf blower.

At a bronze pour last week, Eggert prepared to heat a crucible loaded with chunks of yellow metal. He touched off the gas in his small furnace with a barbecue lighter, producing a modest plume of flame.

Then he fired up the leaf blower, fanning the flames into a roaring column. Over the thunder of the forge, Eggert said, "I knew the Weed Eater had the right pressure and the right CFMs (cubic feet per minute) to do the job. Just good old Yankee ingenuity."

The Yankee touch extends to more than his furnaces.

For sand-casting, a process that molds the molten metal in packed sand, he uses a homebuilt muller to take out the lumps. The device is made from a cement mixer combined with parts from a clothes drier.

His second furnace is made from a large segment of water pipe that he lined with refractory brick and cement.

"The original ones were made of pot metal - a lot of zinc in there," Eggert said, tapping the shiny new casings, each about the size of a candy bar.

Other projects include bronze butt plates for antique rifles, custom oarlocks, dock cleats and other specialty parts.

He's also doing more products these days for the cemetery market, including vase rings and rosettes for mausoleum vaults. He’s looking at casting urns.

He hasn't advertised. People tend to hear about him through word of mouth, but in the Internet age, word of mouth can spread quickly.

"It's stressful - no question. It’s a lot more comfortable working for a company. But this is so much more rewarding," Eggert said.” This is my future and the future of my family I'm working on."

Eggert's goals include outfitting a bigger furnace with a quarter-ton capacity so he can cast larger pieces.

He's also interested in getting set up to do lost-wax investment casting, a process where a wax object is "invested" in a heat-resistant plaster or similar material, then melted out to leave an empty space for the liquid metal to fill. He’s hoping the lost-wax capability will attract sculptors and artisans to his business.

"There's a few foundries up in Portland I could compete with, but I don't think they have near the overall talent that people in the valley do," he said, referring to the number of skilled metalworkers in the Albany area.

"It would be nice to get the lost-wax thing going, put some stuff out there and gather some investors to start taking a piece of this market. But if I have to, I'll go it alone," Eggert said.