Minting the medals on Sussex Drive

 To make the undulating Olympic medals— each of which is unique — the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa had to reinvent the wheel, and then some. In the process, Maria Cook discovered, it set a new standard for future games.

  The Ottawa CitizenFebruary 15, 2010Be the first to post a comment    

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Photograph by: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen

See the medals today

Where: Boutique of the Royal Canadian Mint, 320 Sussex Dr.

When: Today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

What: Visitors can see the larger-than-life designs of the Vancouver 2010 athlete medals depicted on the exterior of the mint’s historic building and view and photograph the Vancouver 2010 athlete medals.

What else: Visitors can exchange coins to receive the 2010 Lucky Loonie.

OTTAWA — The athletes standing on the podium in Vancouver will receive gold, silver and bronze medals made at the Royal Canadian Mint on Sussex Drive. For the athletes, they represent the highest achievement in their sport. At the mint, they are celebrated as the pinnacle of craftsmanship.

“Their true journey starts now,” says Renato Romozzi, the mint’s design co-ordinator.

“When these medals find their rightful owners, they are going to represent Canada all over the world. We’re so proud. They’re such beautiful medals.” The mint assembled 34 engineers, engravers, die technicians, machinists and production experts to make the 615 Olympic and 399 Paralympic medals.

It was probably the most challenging job ever faced by the mint, says Romozzi, 53.

“I don’t think we’ve made anything that comes close to the complexity,” he says.

“We’ve never put together a group of people like we did for this medal; a lot of people, a lot of technologies.” It was the final step of a two-year creative process that spanned the country.

“It’s all done with love,” says Romozzi.

The medals were designed by artist Corrine Hunt, 50, and industrial designer Omer Arbel, 33, both of Vancouver. Hunt, of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage, comes from a renowned family of West Coast artists.

Viewed from the side, the medal forms a gentle wave shape, inspired by the ocean, mountains and snow drifts of British Columbia.

“They will be unique,” says Jim Greensfelder, a Florida collector who wrote a reference guide to Olympic medals.

“There’s never been a medal that’s had that (wavy) contour,” he says. “People will recognize it as being very distinctive for Vancouver and Canada.” No two medals are alike. Each of the 1,104 medals is engraved with a different segment cropped from two drawings by Hunt.

She chose to depict a killer whale or orca on the Olympic medals “because of its strength and beauty and athleticism, as well as the idea that the orca travels within its community,” she says.

“Just as the athlete is not alone but it is always surrounded by his or her community, which would be the team or nation.” Hunt’s orca is drawn in four panels as it might appear on a traditional bentwood box “used to contain the treasures of our culture,” she says. “The idea was that the athletes would receive their treasure from this box.” For the Paralympic medals, Hunt drew a raven in three parts in the style of a totem pole. The raven is associated with creativity.

“My uncle is paraplegic,” she explains. “He’s risen above all these challenges to become the captain of a fishing boat and an engraver and he taught me how to engrave.” Each athlete will receive a scarf printed with the master artwork in which they will be able to find their fragment.

“All the medals together make the complete art work,” says Arbel. “Every athlete’s story is unique, but together they’re part of a larger Olympic whole.” Weighing between 500 and 576 grams, the medals are among the heaviest in Games history.

“Athletes like them heavier,” says Greensfelder. “They feel like it’s more substantial, that it’s worth more.” The Olympic medals are circular, 100 mm in diameter. The Paralympic medals are a squared-circle and measure 95mm by 95mm.

For the first time, Paralympic medals are equal in size to Olympic medals. “Paralympic are usually much smaller,” says Romozzi. “These set the standard now for the rest of the world to follow.” While the mint produces circulation coins in Winnipeg, the Crown corporation’s Ottawa headquarters makes collectors’ coins and medals, including military medals and Order of Canada medals.

It has made Olympic medals once before, for the 1976 Montreal games.

Romozzi, a native of Ottawa and a graduate of Algonquin College in electro-mechanical technology, met with Hunt and Arbel in Vancouver to discuss how the mint could bring their design to life.

“We bumped heads on the shape,” he recalls. “It was pull, take, give.” Arbel’s original proposal consisted of two discs that opened and contained an interior cavity. Arbel envisioned the medal as a locket that could hold an item of sentimental value such as a lucky charm or a photograph.

The locket idea fell away. But the undulating surface would push the mint team to the limit.

“The challenge for us was to strike a medal with bumps,” says Romozzi. “This is not something that is very common in our industry. Coins are flat. Some have high relief, but nothing like this.” They experimented with press settings and designs of dies, metal blocks imprinted with undulations which give the medals their shape. Many early attempts were melted down.

“Every time you struck, the dies would move apart,” recalls Romozzi. “The undulations don’t actually meet each other. That’s where we had a lot of trouble. It was so critical for the shape to be exactly what we needed and to be consistent.” Not least of all for the laser machine which etches the motifs onto the medals. “The laser follows the bumps,” says Romozzi. “If they’re all different, the laser freaks out.” The 102-year-old mint is a familiar landmark in Ottawa. Sitting on a bluff above the Ottawa River, it resembles a castle with its stone walls and turrets.

The medals were made at the plant inside, which is organized into rooms equipped with large machines. Each medal took 24 hours to complete and went through more than 30 steps.

The metal came from Vancouver mining giant Teck Resources, a Games sponsor.

They supplied 1,950 kilograms of sterling silver (for the silver and gold medals), 2.05 kilograms of gold (to plate each gold medal with six grams of gold), and 903 kilograms of copper (for the bronze medals.) Production started at a massive furnace where the raw materials are melted down. “It looks like molten lava,” says Romozzi. “It’s red hot.” The liquid metal exits the furnace through a device that forms it into bars about 60 centimetres long and 15 mm thick. These bars pass through a machine in which two giant rolling pins compress them to the required thickness of 9.2 mm.

As the metal gets thinner, the bars stretch to strips about 2.5 metres long.

The strips are chopped into square plates called blanks, which measure 106 mm by 106 mm.

Washed, rinsed and heated in the furnace, the blanks are ready to be struck. Each blank is hand-placed on the press between the two dies. The medal is struck nine times with 1,900 tonnes of pressure, the weight of 760 cars piled on top of each other.

“The tonnage is incredible. We’ve never struck anything as high as 1,900 tonnes,” says Romozzi.

By comparison, a silver dollar is struck twice with between 200 and 300 tonnes.

“There’s so much material,” he says. “Pressing it once doesn’t fill it properly. We have to squish it nine times. The press looks like it’s taking a big bite every time it comes down.” The blank is struck in three sets. In between each set, the blanks are heated in a 600C furnace for four hours to make them softer.

After the strikes “you’ve got this thing that looks like a little pizza,” says Romozzi. “The design is right in the centre. You’ve got all this excess material around it.” A milling machine trims the surplus. Another tool cuts a slot in the edge of the medal in which a hanger for the ribbon is inserted.

The next step is to etch the artwork onto the discs with a laser machine which is programmed to apply the motifs. This proved a struggle.

The pattern of the artwork on the front of the medal goes through the Olympic rings or three Paralympic agitos. But the machine could not laser on the rings.

“Our guys did the most incredible thing,” says Romozzi. “They did something the (machine’s manufacturer) didn’t know you could do. They trained the laser to know what the rings were. They would jump over, laser inside and jump out.” On the reverse side, the medals contain the official names of the Games in English and French, Vancouver 2010′s emblems, and the name of the sport and event the medal was awarded in. Finally, each medal is clad in transparent protective coating to prevent wear and tarnishing.

After 402 days, the medals were finished. The $2 million feat was part of the mint’s sponsorship of the Games.

“They shipped out Jan. 8, so we lost them,” says Romozzi. “It was a sad moment. We got so attached to them.” In the search for a medal that would reflect Canada and delight athletes, the design team learned “just how much meaning a small object could have,” says Arbel.

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