Belleville History Alive!

Maple Leaf Flag..., Part 2

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Hopes for World's Fair Orders For Belleville-Made Articles By ANDY TURNBULL F.M.I. ENGRAVERS "Expo 67", the .Montreal world's fair planned for Canada's centennial year, may mean big business for Paul Mercier Industries, of Belleville. Hercd-er is hoping .for several contracts for engraved item's -- identification badges, signs and the like -- from the fair itself and he is trying to have a line of made · in - Belleville costume jewellery accepted for sale at concessions at the fair. The jewellery is made by Avon Jewellery of Belleville according to Paul Mercier's design and with the PMI trademark. Most1 ot if bears a Canadian motif, and it is distributed coast to coast. The engraved"products are a develoipimient of ^Mercier's business as a Front St. jeweller. He bought a pantograph engraving men in e about fifteen years ago, to engrave plaques, gifts and the Bke. Two years ago he was apip'roached by a local industrial : firm with an engraving pro'blem, and he salved the problem. Since then he has added three more panograph engraving machines to his shop, and he now gets regular business from about 20 local industries. A lot of his wiork is done in plastic. Working with laminated plastics -- a colored veneer on a white sheet -- he cuts away the colored veneer so the pattern or lettering shows through. He makes signs and identification badges for dubs and other organizations. But a growing percentage oi the work is done in brass, steel and aluminum. One job now in progress is a good example ot this sort of work. Mercier is engraving the crest of the city of Sarnia on the cover plates for doorlatches for the building. The work is being frone under subcontract from International Harwdare. He also has regular orders for engraving the "push" and "pull" inscriptions on push-bars for glass doors. TRACED ON LINOLEUM In the shop above his Front St. jewellery store, Mercier enlarges a customer's sketch with an opaque projector (mounted on rails hung from the ceiling) to the required size on a sheet of linoleum, The pattern is then cut by hand in the linoleum. Next step is to make a master pattern, with a pantograph 'engraving machine. A pantograph is a machine with two styluses, pens or other instru ments connected so one will imitate -- on the same or a different scale -- the motions of the other. In a pantograph engraving machine, one stylus is used to follow the pattern, and a rotary cutting tool cuts a similar pattern in the material. All Mercier's machines are rigged to reduce the pattern size on scales ot about three to one. The master pattern, cut in brass, is smaller than that linoleum pattern but larger than the final engraving. Finished, it is clamped in place on the engraving machine and the final work is ready to begin. Newest line produced by P.M.I, is a maple leaf flag design silk-screen printed on plastic with a pin on the back, for use as a brooch. The pins hit the market in Belleville last week and are slowly spreading through the district Mercier hopes to have national distribution arranged in the near future. ' BEIUVIIU PUBU& UBRJW 223 PINNACLE ST. BELLEVILLE, ONT. K8N 3A7

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