Wolverine Bronze Co.

WOLVER INE BRONZE CO. Chicago and bought a furnace big enough for the job. Over the course of a weekend, they got the mold made, hooked up the furnace, and poured the casting. Ford took it down through their machine shop about two miles from here, machined it, and decided it was the nicest aluminum casting they were able to find. After that, Wolverine Bronze made several large additions to the foundry and had a good six-year run with Ford Motor Company, replacing their iron platens with aluminum ones. That’s what put us on the map.” Today, Wolverine Bronze Co. employs 93 workers divided amongst three subsidiary companies. Accurate Boring, founded in 1970 and located in Fraser, MI, is a full-service job shop with one of the area’s largest boring mill capacities. Spartan Grinding, which operates in the same campus as Wolverine Bronze, is a Blanchard grinding facility founded in 1975. International Casting is their ferrous division, located in New Baltimore, MI., specializing in prototype, jobbing, and semi- production castings. “These are companies that we originally acquired and built into what they are and Wolverine Bronze started on its track as the automotive tooling supplier it exists as today. Their mentality was really just that of two people tired of working for other people and thought it would be a better idea to work for themselves.” Their big break came when the Ford Motor Company turned up with a custom order that required a little ingenuity to fill. “We were just a 6,000-square-foot, cinder block building housing a couple of centrifugal cast manual rotating machines,” recalls Richard. “But back in the early ‘60s, cars were getting big. Most of the press welders that were being used at Ford were made with heavy iron platens. Automotive body panels were becoming so large that Ford was either going to have to replace those iron platens with aluminum ones or make a huge capital investment and renew all their press welding systems. They came to us in this little 6,000-square-foot building and my father convinced these guys he could make them an aluminum base.” “He actually talked them into leaving their pattern here,” Richard continues. “My father then drove to