If there’s one thing I miss about dear old Blighty it’s the late-night kebab - or key-bob if you happen to be an American - run after allowing oneself to get a little too tipsy. Whether you need counselling in the form of comfort eating after being blown out more times than a worn tyre or just need something to soak up the beer, there’s nothing quite like unknown meat in unleavened bread covered in a bevy of sauces.

Unfortunately, most kebab establishments tend to be, shall we say, a bit cruddy. Obviously most neither notice nor care due various stages of blindness brought about by inadvertently taking jelly shots to the eyeball. However, it’s nice to see that certain kebab joints are bucking the trend with snazzy stainless steel counters:

You can see a few more pictures here.

Not too long ago I did a piece on our sister blog, The Tinbasher, relating to architectural stainless steel buildings.

If you’re interested, you can take a look at my steel building article here.

So how do you like the new site?

And if you’ve never been here before……how do you like the new site?

I’m still playing around with a few things but this is basically it. If you come across anything that isn’t working for you or seems a little weird, please leave me a comment so I can try and fix it.  There are one or two slight differences in the way it displays in firefox and internet explorer, and personally, I prefer the way it displays in ie.

Do have fun with the gallery at the bottom of the page as well as even more fun with the portfolio, which allows you to zoom and drag pictures of a larger size around your browser to compare and contrast things if you want. I’ll be adding more pictures to that as we go along.

Enjoy.

There’s industrial design and designer industrial. I’m quite sure the following stainless steel shower contraption falls into the latter of the two categories.

They almost remind me of some lamp fittings and water feature arrangements I toyed with a while back constructed from industrial pipe fittings.

You know, flanges for bases and elbows for spouts. It’s simply shocking that I was so severely laughed at for my sterling efforts. Like it was my fault the prototype galvanised versions rusted on the threads and I couldn’t get them apart without a vice and a monkey wrench. The final ones were always going to be made out of stainless.

Still, enough rambling about my failed design projects…..I like this shower.

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You can ignore everything in this post as all is well. Call on 440-453-6125.

Could anybody getting in touch from America please get in contact via email initially. I’m currently changing cable packages and won’t be reconnected until next Wednesday (fingers crossed).

Now you may think that shouldn’t be any of your concern, but considering I solely use Skype as my phone service then it is when there’s only a dial-up connection to go through. You really don’t want to experience dial-up Skype.

So, if you could just email me at paul[at]tinpotalley[dot]com for the time being life would be sweet.

Sorry for any inconvenience but it’s only a temporary measure. I should hopefully have a new cell phone the beginning of next week.

Note: This is only for people wanting to get in touch from America.

Cheers.

UPDATE: We’re back up and running. You can ring to your heart’s content on 440-453-6125.

According to this website:

Buckminsterfullerene is discovered by Sir Harold Kroto in the UK and Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, Jr in the US. These three researchers shared the 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry for their discovery. Buckminsterfullerene’s atoms are bonded together into a highly symmetrical, hollow polygon structure (resembling a sphere) with 60 vertices and 32 faces, 12 of which are pentagons and 20 of which are hexagons giving it the same geometry as that of a football. Named after the architect R Buckminster Fuller (Bucky) whose geodesic dome design is similar to the molecular structure of C60, these unique structures, also known as buckyballs, have led to an entirely new branch of chemistry.

Depending on whether you were dragged up or had a slightly more middle class academic upbringing, you will be inclined to regard the above planter as a fully welded football or as a stainless steel Buckminster Fullerene.

For the record, it should be noted that these were first cobbled together in response to an enquiry about footballs.

You can take a look at a few more pictures at the bottom of the page then cast your own vote.

We’re currently on the lookout for a fabrication jobshop in or around Cleveland, Ohio to fabricate some of our planters so we can actually accommodate the enquiries we receive from America.

If you’re interested you can read a bit more about it over at The Tinbasher.

However, that isn’t to say we’ll jump into bed with the first bunch who salute. It’s just that now I’m finally over in Cleveland for good, it just seems to make sense.

Remember folks - it’s quality not quantity!

It seems that we’re causing a bit of a flutter at The Conference Guide as to whether we’d be suitable new sponsors after Nationwide’s pull-out.

We might have tinpot in our name, but we’re not that tinpot.

And besides that, we’re Burnley fans.

In the beginning there was stainless steel, and the stainless steel was good.

Tinpot Alley started as a very different beast to the one you see now. Its first manifestation came as a reaction to just one hexagonal planter Matt designed out of stainless steel that all of us kidded ourselves would be the killer product which lead us from rags to riches.

Being a bit green behind the gills we wanted to market the thing accordingly and quickly fell into the trap of giving the impression we were some huge stainless steel planter conglomerate.

Big mistake!

Planters Direct probably ticked all the wrong boxes in the wrong order. Essentially we were trying to impose a very small range of products until we’d heard enough. People were constantly asking us for different and varying sizes to what we were offering. Not only were we not too intent on listening, but we tried our best to stick to our guns.

It soon became apparent that there was quite a disconnect between what we wanted to offer and what we were asked if we could offer. In a way this is quite a blessing in disguise as it only required us to realign and cater to those requests.

It didn’t take long once we’d got our collective noggins round this to drop the whole Planters Direct cobblers. Let’s face it: we were never going to be the Amazon of the stainless steel planter world. If anything, we were confusing the issue by trying to offer exclusivity to the masses but at something of a premium.

Whilst this planter thing could operate as a fully-fledged business in its own right, the whole fabrication, production and design aspects fit fairly seamlessly into what Butler Sheetmetal Ltd already do. It’s very much an incorporated sideline if such a thing can exist.

Tinpot Alley was born out of a need to reflect a more customer oriented affair offering bespoke metalwork solutions for the home, garden and office. Does it not make more sense to fabricate 29 stainless steel planters to specific requirements than one or two so-called ‘products’ we’re trying to push? It keeps everybody happy.

I suppose we’ve been fortunate that we could make these mistakes without really impacting the customer. We’ve also been fortunate that it isn’t our core business. But, saying that, it’s playing a more vital and prominent role now than it ever has done.

We’ve decided to end up at the quality end of the market as it’s something we’ve always done and the quality end of the market also began to target us.

And who are we to argue?

Imagine, if you will, that G-Plan began designing autopsy equipment for your bathroom.

Personally, I love it.

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