For the past 15+ years Burley has made several styles of birdbath tops with built in locking features. Our customers have loved them and we have always been able to provide that extra bit of peace of mind.
Our owners have been looking closely at production this past year and fine tuning what we can to get better quality and more consistency with everything we do now that we are down to just a few people to make our beautiful products. We know that with each run of tops, pedestals, and pots that we do, there will always be items that will come out poorly and need to be recycled back - but this means time and energy was wasted on a product to just have it be scrapped and recycled back into clay. Each run of our lock-in tops that we make, we have over 70 or more that end up being recycled due to the knob breaking when the holes are drilled.
The tops have to be pulled from the molds at just the right time during the drying process to be drilled so the knob does not break or crack before it reaches the warehouse floor. If its pulled too soon so cracking will be harder to happen, the holes shrink more than they should and after its burned, the pins wont go in. If its drilled too late, the knobs are more brittle and prone to cracking and breaking. Getting them right is not always able to happen and we end up with more losses than our owners can allow to happen right now.
So this all means, moving forward this year we will no longer be drilling the tops to make them locking. I know, its heartbreaking to hear, but at this point there is nothing we can do to get those knobs to come out even 90% of the time perfect. The tops are handled several times after they are pulled from the molds and each time, more tops have the chance to be scrapped before they are even burned.
After they are burned, we get even more seconds with knobs that the holes are too small to fit the pins, or knobs that are half broken or cracked. Something has to change and until we can figure out why our losses have gone up this much for our lock-in's, this is just how it has to be.
We completely understand the frustration that everyone will have with our sets now no longer locking, so for each set that used to lock, we will be including a strip of our birdbath adhesive to help keep the top on the pedestal more securely. The adhesive is great as it gives the top a nice hold on the pedestal while still making it removable for cleanings and winter storage.
For customers wanting to know if they could request to have their top drilled and still made locking - as much as we would love to honor requests like that, theres no guarantee for the top that is drilled for a specific order to come out at the quality it needs to. The knob could still have those issues or other problems and we would be back at square one for that order.
We hope to bring back the lock-in's once again, but there is no ETA for that at this time.