Wednesday, 12 August 2009

What did you learn yesterday?

I learnt how they put the letters in the sticks of rock!

Although I think I possibly learnt the basics from Play School all those years ago, somewhere through the round window I suspect, I have never seen it for myself. But when we went past Docwras Rock Shop in Great Yarmouth yesterday (oh yes - we escaped to the seaside for the day) they were making rock so I had to pop in and have a look and because I think it is a valuable lesson I took some pictures to show you all!


This machine pulls and rolls the soft rock mixture
Pink rock mix is rolled out to make the letters
Stips of pink and white rock mixture are pieced together to form the letters

Can you tell what it is yet?

Holding the pink and white letters to stretch them

That's what it says!

The outside coloured rock mixture is pulled, rolled and stretched

The letters which are now formed into words are put on a rolled out piece of white mixture, and then the centre which you can see being rolled out in the background is placed on top with the second set of letters placed on top of that!

One big roll of the inside of a stick of rock

Putting the outside coloured rock on

These two didn't speak a word to each other the whole time they were working, cutting and passing bits of rock to each other until they shared a joke whilst rolling the rock at this point.

The giant lump of rock is placed in the rolling machine which gradually turns it and pulls it into the regular size of rock you can buy

The first roll of rock comes off the machine

And it keeps on coming! As it is still soft the rock has to be kept moving so that it keeps its shape until it has fully set.

Finally the rock is cut and packaged with the little picture card depicting where it is from. Clearly this is different coloured rock but they just happened to be packaging this one up and I couldn't wait to see the multicoloured one all cut and packaged - I was too keen to get to the beach!

I am so pleased I got to see this, it was fascinating and I am sure it is so much harder to do than the two experts made it look!
I'm back off to work again now, take care all
Sarah x

3 comments:

  1. wow, that is really amazing!
    I had no idea they did it like that!
    Rose XXX

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always wondered how they did the letters in rock!
    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I saw this being done years ago at Blackpool, it's fascinating, well done on getting all the stages photographed (and loaded in order!).
    Hope the rest of the day was as much fun.

    Sue xx

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comments, I do read them all and sometimes I even reply, now that I have figured out how to! Thanks again, take care x