Icarus Originals are honoured to be working in partnership with the Ruskin Museum and Campbell Family Heritage Trust to mark the 100th anniversary year of the birth of legendary speed record breaker Donald Campbell CBE (23 March 1921 – 4 January 1967).
Campbell broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He was awarded the CBE in January 1957 for his water speed record breaking. He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year (1964). He died during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England.
Campbell began development of Bluebird K7 in 1953. The K7 was a steel-framed, aluminium-bodied, three-point hydroplane with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl axial-flow turbojet engine, producing 3,500-pound-force (16kN) of thrust. The designation ‘K7’ was carried on a prominent white roundel on each sponson, underneath an infinity symbol. Campbell set seven world water speed records in K7 between July 1955 and December 1964.
Icarus Originals has been entrusted with a precious piece of aluminium from Bluebird K7 to incorporate into our Donald Campbell Centenary designs. The limited edition cufflinks all come with certificates of authenticity signed by Campbell’s daughter, Gina. A proportion of monies raised will go towards the care and conservation of the Campbell Collection housed within the Ruskin Museum in Coniston.
At Icarus Originals we want to give our customers the chance to own a small piece of history.Whether it’s the fastest-ever Concorde, the classic E-Type coupé or the celebrated Japanese Bullet Train, these iconic legends of engineering, spark a feeling of excitement and progress.
We love to bring these small snapshots of history and technical achievement to life. But how do we research, design, develop and manufacture our products? It’s an intricate process that combines cutting-edge technology with traditional craftsmanship. It’s this complete commitment to perfection that makes our pieces so distinctive and desirable.
Our signature product
In this blog, we’ll look exclusively at our signature product – our cufflinks. To illustrate our process, we’ll consider Concorde 101 (G-AXDN). There are six stages to take a project from an idea to something you can buy from our website:
1. Project research
2. Material acquisition
3. CAD/3D design & development
4. 3D printing & master production
5. Lost wax investment casting
6. Finishing
Concorde Cufflink Gift Set made from Concorde Aluminium
Project research
Understandably, we were very keen to offer our customers a piece of Concorde. Not just any Concorde, but the particular aircraft that set the speed record for the type at 1,450 miles per hour. We knew Concorde would be challenging to reproduce at a small scale but, given its iconic nature, it was a challenge we were up for.
Material acquisition
With so few Concordes produced, material is scarce and hard to come by. The majority of the surviving airframes reside in museums around the globe. We needed to find a surviving Concorde owed by a preservation group that was working on its restoration, and would be willing to collaborate with us on our project. This is how we usually come by our precious aircraft material, and in this instance we were lucky enough to be introduced to Duxford Aviation Society (DAS). DAS owns Concorde 101 G-AXDN and had a small amount of hiduminium aluminium alloy from the engine air intake assembly left over from its restoration efforts. This would be our ‘raw material’. Most importantly, we could complement the material with the guarantee of authenticity that comes from working with an aircraft’s owners. That guarantee is a critical element of our product offer. Where possible, we always look to collaborate with a museum or special interest group as this gives us a means of contributing back financially to supporting our beloved icons for future generations.
CAD/3D design & development
To ensure maximum accuracy of profile, we typically use a combination of 3D scanning and computer aided design (CAD). For Concorde, this entailed taking a 3D scan of a scale model and then manually adapting the design in a CAD software package to make sure we faithfully replicate the most iconic features which is more of a challenge than it may sound given that the typical length of a cufflink is 26mm and the original aircraft is 62000mm! This process is always difficult, since we need to thicken up certain surfaces and round off particular details to attain a delicate balance of accuracy, practicability (they will be worn, after all) and viability of manufacture.
CAD images of Concorde during the design stage.
3D printing & master production
With a finalised design, we can progress to 3D printing to allow us to cast a master component. Here, we use a high-resolution 3D printer to print, layer by layer, an exact rendering of our design. Once complete, we end up with a replica of our Concorde cufflink made of a special resin that melts away at 400 degrees centigrade This can now be used to make a master using the magic of lost wax investment casting..
This delicate rendering of Concorde will now be cast in silver using the lost wax process detailed below. Once in this precious metal, expert jewellers ensure the master is perfect and free of defects. Once we are happy, we can create the mould that lets us produce the miniature wax models we cast in aluminium reclaimed from Concorde.
Lost Wax Investment Casting
The lost wax method allows jewellery artists to copy the finest detail. It’s as old as human history and the only major changes since its inception has been the addition of technology to allow casters to repeatedly cast without generating a high number of failed items. Lost wax casting is no more complicated than filling a high-definition impression left within a cylinder of modelling plaster. To do this, we take a number of the miniature wax models created in the mould and attach them via sprues (think tiny bits of wax spaghetti!), to a central wax stem. This assembly, called a tree, is placed carefully inside a metal flask about the same size as a large thermos flask and liquid modelling plaster is poured around it so that only a tiny bit of the stem is visible above the plaster. The flask is then vibrated rapidly for an hour to make sure any air bubbles are worked out and that every one of the wax models is completely covered by the plaster. Once this sets, the flask is heated on a vacuum pump. The idea here is to completely vaporise all of the wax and expel it completely from the flask, leaving with you with a perfect impression of each of the wax models and a clear route to the atmosphere via the sprues and the central stem. Once you have reached this point, the final step is to heat up your crucible containing the aluminium alloy removed from an aircraft and very carefully pour it into the hole left by the central stem protruding through the plaster. If you’ve heated the metal to exactly the right temperature (655 degrees centigrade for aluminium), it will pour like a viscous liquid and fill all the voids evenly meaning that the void created by what was once a wax model is filled with aluminium. Once it’s all cooled down, the plaster is cracked off and if you’ve got everything just right, all that’s left is a central aluminium stem with lots of perfect aluminium Concordes attached to it via now little aluminium pieces of spaghetti.
A Jeweller assembles a tree ready for lost wax casting. In this case they are making rings rather than cufflinks but the process is the same.
Industrial lost wax casting. The process of pouring for filling out plaster shells with molten aluminium from ladle.
A master jeweller hand-finishes one of our cufflinks
Finishing
The final step in the process is the finishing (or polishing). Each cast that is cut directly from the tree will appear relatively rough, and a dull metallic hue. Each casting needs to have the remaining sprue removed and then the whole piece can be polished against a special abrasive polishing wheel. The hand finishing takes a tremendous amount of skill to ensure the correct pressure is applied to every angle and surface. The individuals who polish the Concordes have often been apprenticed since a very young age and are rightly recognised as master craftspeople within their area of expertise. Given the nature of the process involved in creating them, each Concorde can have slight differences meaning that they are matched into perfectly complementary pairs. The final result will be a beautifully hand polished rendering of Concorde 101, perfectly unique to the wearer. Throughout every step of this whole process, quality control and removal of defective casts means that from start to finish perhaps as many as 35 per cent of all items will be rejected. The whole process can be time-consuming and reliant on manual skills built up over many years.
As you can see, there’s a lot more to turning a part of an icon into something you can wear than you might think. Although it will hopefully become a treasured item that will be handed down to future generations, every single item we produce captures a little bit of the soul of an icon and allows you to carry on the journey of something that has affected the lives of millions of people globally. With the extra knowledge that the item you have has helped sustain restoration activity and supported the livelihood of a wide network of artisans, there’s a lot more to our products than their superficial beauty and timeless designs.
Shop our Concorde range now to find a collectible or gift that will last a lifetime.
The Vulcan XH558, an iconic example of British aerospace engineering at its world-beating best and a design that made British aviation technology the envy of the world. Indeed, the Vulcan bomber was one of the most innovative British aircraft of the Cold War period, armed with nuclear weapons and capable of conventional bombing. The Avro Vulcan XH558 was the very last of the 136 Vulcans built to take air, operated by the Vulcan of the Sky trust and flown by a decade long-quest of a dedicated team of volunteers and RAF-trained engineers. Returning one of these four-engined bombers to the skies was one of the most complex aircraft preservation projects undertaken anywhere in the world, involving years of fundraising, logistical nightmares and many thousands of man hours of meticulous work.
XH558 now resides in Doncaster, where the public are able to visit and be inspired by the aircraft that was at the very edge of aviation technology of the time. With rolls-royce olympus turbojet engines – the forefathers of the giant turbines that powered the concorde – this British aviation has been the basis of every modern turbojet engine since!
But, you can now own your own slice of aviation history…
Aviation Cufflink Production Process and Design of the Vulcan XH558
Thanks to our partnership with the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, we were able to produce beautiful aviation cufflinks cast from melted down parts reclaimed from this historic aircraft. By combining our skill in the field of design and production, together with the unparalleled expertise and knowledge of the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, we were able to create a finely-crafted 3D rendering of Vulcan XH558.
After initial design work and the creation of a high-resolution mould, we then melt down suitable components reclaimed from the aircraft and re-cast them into single-piece cufflinks. With the material authenticated and isolated at each stage of manufacture, the provenance of the metal is maintained throughout. With the products cast using the lost wax investment method, the items could then be hand-finished by our master craftsmen. Finally, our Avro Vulcan cufflinks were packaged in a deluxe gift set that included added extras particular to this aircraft. For example, each Vulcan cufflink came wrapped in part of the brake parachute from Vulcan XH558 and was supplied with a certificate of authenticity, data book and even a hand-sewn ‘panther head’ storage bag made from official NOMEXTM flying suit material.
With no financial investment, the Vulcan to the Sky Trust was able to monetise surplus components and in doing so has helped create a beautiful and inherently premium aviation cufflink product that will both delight customers and generate royalties and awareness to support preservation work into the future.
Official Bluebird K7 Pin Badge£79.99
Official Bluebird K7 Cufflinks£189.99
