Fountain man recycles aluminum in unique way

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2010, Americans threw away approximately 2.7 million tons of aluminum-based products. The largest percentage of this aluminum came from soft drink and beer cans. In all, only 50 percent, or 0.7 million tons, of those aluminum cans were recycled. There are many great recycling centers which accept those mountains of cans you have wanted to get rid of for a while, but if you are looking for a creative way of disposing your cans, you would have to talk to Duane Vonch of Fountain.

Vonch, 77, is a man of many hobbies. He enjoys trout fishing in the summer, deer hunting in the fall, ice fishing in the winter, and gardening in the spring.

In addition, he is an artist. He paints a little, does some woodwork, sometimes sculpts, and always seems brim full of ideas for his next project.

"God gave me a talent," shared Vonch, "and I use it." He has been using that talent ever since he was a teenager.

Born at Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester in 1935, Vonch lived there most of his life, and just moved to Fountain with his wife, Judy, some five years ago.

Located in Vonch's basement is a shop area that houses numerous wood-cutting saws, lots of nuts and bolts, plenty of work benches, and plastic bags full of aluminum cans.

These cans are the medium Vonch chooses to work with nowadays as he makes fish, cars, planes and a variety of other animals and objects out of them. He said he got the idea from Bill and Marni Woltz, who are related to Judy, when they brought him a small double-wing airplane made out of old beer cans for his birthday five years ago.

In the past five years, Vonch thinks he has probably made over 100 pieces of art made out of an assortment of beer and soft drink cans. The processes of making one of these pieces vary only slightly between making a car, a plane or a fish. Each type and size has its own blueprint that Vonch painstakingly draws by hand.

Vonch uses plywood to make a "skeleton" of whatever he wants to make. He washes every can with a Hilex cleaner to get rid of any beverage residue still left in the can. He then cuts the top and bottom off of a can with a band saw. Vonch then trims the edges to make them smooth and cuts the aluminum to be able to lay the entire piece flat. From there, he decides how he wants to use the piece, either making more cuts in the metal or stapling the entire piece directly to the plywood "skeleton."

For planes and cars, Vonch has to use nuts and bolts in order to create parts of the frame and wings. He also uses metal clothes hangers for plane or bird wings. Craft eyeballs for the fish, hinges for pontoon boat doors, cardboard and a variety of other odds and ends fill up his shop area.

Vonch gets most of his cans from friends and family and sometimes gets requests from them to make a fish out a certain type of can.