We received a great assist in this work from Borden Chemical Company when we requested samples of various resin binders to form the exothermic into hot top shapes. Borden wanted to develop a resin for the growing exothermic hot top market. Again, the key was a resin that would not generate enough gas to boil the contained molten steel. Borden’s efforts to date had not been successful, but they kept supplying us with experimental batches of resin until we found one that worked. It all came together, exothermic and resin and within five years, we were doing in excess of $1 million sales with non-clay refractories, as we named this product line, and making some money at it. Borden also had a successful new product that it sold to the industry for many years. The result of this research also met our most important criteria, producing the product without much capital investment. In our process, we simply mixed the dry ingredients in a barrel mixer, poured them into a metal mold and heated at 500 degrees for a few minutes. The form was removed from the oven, hot top removed from the form, and packaged and shipped.
