Sometimes… or actually quite often, I find cool/fun/hilarious things on the internet. Only vary rarely, however, do they have anything to do with brass and bronze. Today was one of those rare occasions. Back in 1992, the Australian government officially took their one and two-cent coins out of circulation. Those coins, much like American pennies, were largely made of copper. So now Australia has a huge pile of copper. What to do with it? Well, if you remember the year 2000 (a

Happy almost Thanksgiving, everyone! In this post, I’d like to highlight some of Progressive Bronze’s custom manufacturing projects and capabilities. We’ve already covered some custom manufacturing projects like these curtain rods, and now we’d like to cover some of the other projects we’ve taken on. Here at Progressive Bronze we have a fully equipped shop, able to machine, spin, or cast parts. The parts are then finished to your specification, be it raw, polished, or plated

We recently had the opportunity to refinish a number of sports trophies from St. Viator, a nearby Catholic school. There is some serious history in these, with the oldest dating back to the 1920s and the newest of the bunch coming from the 1950s. They are mostly for baseball and softball, but don’t think St. Viator is a one sport school! There is a swimming trophy in there too. As you can see from the ‘before’ image above, these trophies were definitely showing some of their

We were contacted by the deAurora Showroom about refinishing cast bronze letters that make up their logo. Their color scheme has changed, and the existing look had to go: They had originally applied a green patina that emulated natural corrosion, and the idea was to give them more of an oiled bronze look, which is essentially the same as our statuary finish. These letters are made of a very nice, heavy bronze, so we had zero concerns about the state of the underlying metal. W

Happy new year! We had a lovely vacation at Progressive Bronze, and now that we are back to work it’s time to highlight some more projects we’ve been working on. Toward the end of November the Lyons, IL Fire Department contacted us regarding a plaque that was installed when their firehouse when it was renovated in 1973. I am a big fan of plaques generally – I read just about every one I come across – so I was happy to hear they were looking to refinish. Understandably, after

Typically, people bring in a bronze or brass piece, and would like us to either refinish it to restore its luster, or at least not damage the existing patina. But what if the damage is so bad we have to refinish the item? And the customer wants to preserve the look of the piece? Our customer approached us with exactly this problem. His mother was a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution, and upon her death in 1941 a bronze marker indicating her membership was plac

If you are like me, you missed the ‘know your alloys’ lecture that one day in metallurgy class. Well, you’ve got a second chance as I’m willing to share all the knowledge I have gained about bronze, brass, polishing, refinishing and the rest while working at Progressive Bronze. Most of the products we deal at Progressive Bronze with are made out of one of four metal combinations, or alloys – bronze (of course), brass, aluminum, and white metal. Now these are the actual struct

This is the first of two posts highlighting one of our recent refinishing jobs. Back in March, we had a local Chicago resident named Sam find us through Google. He posted on our blog asking about his DIY home restoration project. For this project, Sam was restoring a front door along with the door’s hardware. He contacted us to refinish the door handle, knocker, and lock cover plate. These pictures below show the original state of the items. During our initial phone call with