Author: Mark Elliott

VW Festival sees Harewood House host a varied celebration of Volkswagen vehicles through the ages. The festival has gone from strength to strength and this year will mark the 11th edition in the shows history. Obviously as the name suggests, the main focus will be on the cars and visitors can wander the grounds of the 18th-century manor and observe a comprehensive display. Vehicles include campervans, Karmann Ghia’s and old Beetle’s alongside many of VW’s newer models which extends to the whole VAG group.

Every year the main focus of the show is the ‘show and shine’. This is for attendants who’s car has been preselected to be shown on the show grounds and makes for a great selection of truly jaw dropping vehicles to gaze upon. Whether it’s standard cars or modified cars, there is always a great variety of vehicles on show which makes for an exciting competition. The judging criteria for vehicles can be found below and each winner receives car detailing gear, a trophy and a special gold keyring made by House of Logos:

– Best in Show
– 2nd place
– 3rd place
– Runners up (x7)
– Highly Commended (x2)
– Best Club Stand

That being said, it’s not just about the cars! VW Festival has something to cater for all ages and interests so the whole family can enjoy the whole, whatever their preference on cars. The two large marquees play host to live bands on the Friday and Saturday evenings. One for the small kids and one for the ‘larger kids’. Other activities/entertainment at this years festival include circus performances, stunt displays and animal section which includes everybody’s favourite animal, penguins! Attendants are also encouraged to dress up for the VW Festival and this year is no exception! This years theme is the circus and visitors are encouraged to break out their best gear and dress yourself, your car and your club stand to impress!

VW Festival also has very close relationships to local charities. Every year a raffle is held in aid of a specially selected charity and this year the selected charity is Cash for Kids. The main prize in this raffle is a 1967 VW Beetle restored by Herbie Hospital. Last year the raffle raised over £18,000 for charity.

All our precious metal items are tailor made allowing us to offer a variety of products in precious metals such as 9ct, 18ct gold and sterling silver. Popular items include but are not limited to lapel pins, stick pins, keyrings and cufflinks. This means your company logo or product can be turned into a prestigious piece of jewellery that will be treasured by the recipient and worn with pride. Below we have listed all the steps involved.

First we make a prototype metal model by hand. Usually this is done by sculpting a piece of wax into the desired shape, pattern or logo, which is then cast in metal. This is called the master (the prototype). The master is then polished and finished using small burrs, files and abrasive powders to make the first finished piece.

The master is then laid on to layers of rubber, which is heated up and forms around the master. This process is called vulcanisation. The master is carefully cut out from the rubber, leaving the impression in the rubber. Wax is then injected into the mold, left to dry and removed. These waxes are an exact copy of the metal master. This process is then repeated until the required number of waxes is produced.

The waxes are then attached to a centre wax spru, forming a tree like shape with the waxes acting as the branches. The wax tree containing all the waxes is then put into a metal cylinder called a flask, which is filled with a plaster type substance called investment and allowed to solidify and harden. The flask in then placed into a kiln, burning the wax out and leaving a cavity in the shape of the wax tree. The flask is taken out of the kiln and put into a vacuum casting machine that heats up the 9ct, 18ct gold and sterling silver metal to the correct temperature and poured into the hole where the wax had melted out. The vacuum casting machine ensures that any air inside the mold is removed, so the castings have little to no porosity (air inside). The flask is then plunged into a water tank, which ensures all the investment (plaster) is removed. This leaves you with a metal with the branches being the original wax castings but in precious metal instead. A great video showing this can be found here.

In the final stage, the metal castings are cut away from the tree and cleaned up in a centrifugal polisher. Each piece is finished by hand to make sure there are no small blemishes/imperfections and then buffed and polished by hand, leaving a high quality look, feel and finish. The finished precious metal items are then sent off to the Sheffield Assay office for hallmarking, ensuring the recipients of their authenticity and pedigree.

If you would like any more information regarding our precious metal items or have a design in mind, please don’t hesitate to use the contact form and get in touch.

The Rimstock Plc Group of companies is a worldwide organisation supplying high quality products to a global customer base. The company was founded by Steve Neal, the farther of the famous British racing driver Matt Neal, who is also the company marketing director. Rimstock is notably known for its leading aftermarket alloy wheel brand ‘Team Dynamics’, distributing its products via its loyal customer base in over 40 countries worldwide. It is approved by and supplies a host of the leading OEM vehicle manufacturers including Aston Martin, Bentley and VW.

I (Tom) first met Matt Neal at the 2013 Autosport International show who kindly took time out from his sponsor, media and other work related duties to have a chat. Understandably it was only a brief conversation, but after sending a few e-mails back and forth, 12 months later I was back at Autosport International with the Team Dynamics keyrings you can see above. The keyrings were based on their most popular Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2 wheels and proved to be a real hit.

Since then we have built a fantastic relationship and produced a couple more items together in a relatively short period of time. These include the Rimstock keyrings, again sporting the ever popular Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2 wheels and the 30th year anniversary keyrings and enamel badges, both pictured above.

Being a company that has manufactured items for over 40 years, it’s great to see other British companies achieve such a significant milestone, a massive feat not only for Rimstock, but for British manufacturing considering the market and competition from overseas.

It’s always great to meet up and work with Matt, as despite being a triple BTCC champion and easy to work with, he’s a proper genuine bloke (and a pretty quick one too)!

This was a while back now, but it’s always nice to see well respected personnel with something your company made and this is no exception! We think this is an awesome picture of the legendary racing driver Keiichi Tsuchiya sporting one of the equally awesome 7tune keyrings we produced. If you don’t know who Tsuchiya is, read this little extract I (shamelessly) copied from Wikipedia….

‘Keiichi Tsuchiya is a professional race car driver. He is also known as the “Drift King” (or Dorikin (ドリキン)) for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. He is also known for touge (mountain pass) driving’.

Lots of hard work was put into these to get the look and finish that was achieved on these keyrings and believe me, it’s not easy to get runny enamel paint to spread evenly on a domed surface. Also each keyring is individually numbered on the rear, meaning each one is truly unique, so I wonder what number Tsuchiya got in the end…..