Log Materials and Construction

Hi, this is Rett Rasmussen with Rasmussen Gas, Logs and Grills and I'd like to tell you about how we make our gas logs. It starts with the aggregate. We use a lightweight, expanded shale aggregate in two different sizes. Aggregates are the building blocks of the gas logs. They're... They fit together in a ceramic bond. Then we have our cement, which is the glue that holds together the aggregates. We use a very high temperature cement that will exceed temperatures of 2300 degrees Fahrenheit. We mix them all together with some other additives and then we pour them into latex rubber molds that we have made originally off of a real piece of wood. We don't try to recreate what Mother Nature does by... with a piece of clay and trying to artistically reproduce and duplicate a real piece of wood, we start with the real thing so that we get the undercuts and all of the details from our... our latex rubber molding process. It can take up to three days, or more even, to make a single mold. When it comes out of... When it's in the mold, we put in our steel rod reinforcing; it provides a rigid reinforcement of the log in the case of a heat shock crack. Just like you can get cracks in a sidewalk from uneven heating, a gas log can encounter the same thing. It can heat too much on one, not on another and it relieves itself with a crack. If you don't have any reinforcing in it or something that's not rigid like lath or these little metal shards, you're just going to sag or fall apart ...