GOBLOW // JOURNAL
How GoBlow Is Made — From Bar Stock to Pendant Tool
From bar stock to finished piece
A GoBlow pendant starts as a length of machined stainless steel bar stock and ends as a piece of jewellery you wear to a rooftop in Sydney or a warehouse in Brunswick. The middle of that journey is where the price comes from. This is what actually happens.
A note on supply chain: GoBlow is designed in Melbourne, machined offshore to our 0.05mm spec by audited CNC + PVD partners, and finished/QC'd back in our Abbotsford studio before any unit ships. We don't claim "100% Aussie made" — see our full supply-chain breakdown for where each step actually happens.
Built for this? See our materials page.
The material — machined stainless steel bar stock
Every GoBlow pendant starts with marine-grade machined stainless steel. Not 304 (the cheaper food-grade), not 201 (the budget-grade most fashion jewellery uses), not "stainless steel" with no number stated.
machined stainless steel is the alloy used in marine fittings, marine hardware, and high-corrosion industrial environments. It contains molybdenum, which is what gives it its corrosion resistance. It's harder to machine than cheaper grades — slower cutting speeds, more tool wear, more material cost — and it's the only grade that survives years of contact with skin, sweat, and weather without pitting or losing its finish.
Bar stock arrives as solid round bars, cut to manageable lengths, ready for the lathe.
CNC machining — 0.05mm tolerances
Each pendant is turned on a CNC lathe. Computer-controlled, programmed to the exact dimensions of the piece — 12mm outer diameter, 82mm length, internal threading to spec.
The tolerances are tight. 0.05mm — five-hundredths of a millimetre — across the threading and closure surfaces. This isn't decorative precision. It's functional. The threaded closure system depends on the threads of the cap mating with the threads of the body so cleanly that the cap self-locks under load. Loosen the tolerance to 0.1mm and the threads either bind on insertion or back out under vibration. Loosen it further and the closure stops working.
Threading is cut with a single-point tool, multiple passes, with each pass removing a thin layer until the final pitch is exact. The thread pitch — the distance between thread peaks — has to match between cap and body to within microns. This is the part most cheaper alternatives skip.
The finishing process
After machining, each piece moves into finishing. The route depends on the variant.
Steel — brushed and polished
The Steel variant gets the most direct finishing path. The machined piece is deburred, surfaces are evened, then taken through brushing and polishing stages — abrasives stepped down from coarse to fine until the surface reads as the brushed satin finish you see on the final piece. No coating. The material itself is the finish.
Black, Gold, Rose Gold — PVD vacuum chamber
These three variants go into a PVD vacuum chamber for coating. The process:
- Pieces are cleaned in ultrasonic baths to remove all surface contamination — any residue ruins the bond
- Loaded onto fixtures inside the chamber
- Chamber is pumped to near-vacuum, removing virtually all air
- The target metal — titanium for Black, gold-alloy for Gold, copper-warm titanium for Rose Gold — is vaporised by high-energy bombardment
- The vaporised metal atoms cross the chamber and bond to the steel surface at the molecular level
- Coating builds in microns over hours of controlled deposition
- Pieces are cooled, removed, inspected
The PVD layer is harder than the steel underneath. The colour is integrated into the surface, not sitting on top of it.
Rainbow — TiO2 heat anodising
Rainbow follows a different path. No vacuum chamber. No coating.
The piece is heated in open air to a precise temperature — typically in the 250–600°C range depending on which colours are being produced. Oxygen reacts with the surface and grows a titanium oxide layer directly out of the metal. The thickness of that oxide layer determines the colour — thin layers give straw and bronze, thicker layers give blue, teal, magenta.
Temperature control is the entire process. Five degrees off and the colour shifts. Hold time matters. Cooling rate matters. Each piece comes out with a slightly different colour map across the surface — which is why no two Rainbow pendants are identical.
Quality control
Every piece is inspected before it leaves manufacturing.
- Threading is tested — cap is threaded onto body, cycled, checked for clean engagement
- Closure is cycled multiple times to confirm self-locking behaviour holds
- Surface is inspected for finishing defects — uneven brushing, PVD inconsistencies, oxide colour faults on Rainbow
- Dimensions are spot-checked against tolerance
- Final visual inspection
Pieces that fail any check don't leave the floor. The reject rate is real — particularly on Rainbow, where colour consistency is the hardest to control.
Melbourne design
GoBlow is designed in Melbourne. The product spec, the closure system, the dimensions, the finish lineup, the brand — all designed here. Manufactured to spec by partners who can hold the tolerances and apply the finishes properly. Stock lands in Melbourne and ships from Melbourne to AU customers in days, not weeks.
The design decisions show up in the piece. The 12mm diameter is sized to wear cleanly under a shirt without bulking. The 82mm length is sized to balance against the chain weight. The threading is a self-locking pitch chosen specifically to survive movement. None of these are accidental — they're spec decisions designed in Melbourne and held to in production.
Why it costs what it costs
The price isn't a markup story. It's a manufacturing story.
- machined stainless steel bar stock costs more than cheaper grades
- CNC machining at 0.05mm tolerances takes longer per unit than loose-tolerance machining
- Threading the closure properly requires precision tooling and multiple passes
- Real PVD costs an order of magnitude more than electroplating
- TiO2 anodising requires temperature-controlled equipment and produces real reject rates
- Per-unit inspection is labour, not automation
A piece that costs $15 on a marketplace can't afford any of this. A piece at $150 can afford all of it. That's the gap. The pendant costs more because it costs more to make right.
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