at Corning Glass Works in New York State using Corning's then new material called Pyrex (borosilicate glass). Pyrex was chosen for its low expansion qualities so the large mirror would not distort the images produced when it changed shape due to temperature variations (a problem that plagued earlier large telescopes). The mirror was cast in a mold with 36 raised mold blocks (similar in shape to a waffle iron). This created a honeycomb mirror that cut the amount of Pyrex needed down from over to just , making a mirror that would cool faster in use and have multiple "mounting points" on the back to evenly distribute its weight (note – see external links 1934 article for drawings). The shape of a central hole was also part of the mold so light could pass through the finished mirror when it was used in a Cassegrain configuration (a Pyrex plug for this hole was also made to be used during the grinding and polishing process). While the glass was being poured into the mold during the first attempt to cast the 200-inch mirror, the intense heat caused several of the molding blocks to break loose and float to the top, ruining the mirror. The defective mirror was used to test the annealing process. After the mold was re-engineered, a second mirror was successfully cast. After cooling several months, the finished mirror blank was transported by rail to Pasadena, California. Once in Pasadena the mirror was transferred from the rail flat car to a specially designed semi-trailer for road transport to where it would be polished. In the optical shop in Pasadena (now the Synchrotron building at Caltech) standard telescope mirror making techniques were used to turn the flat blank into a precise concave parabolic shape, although they had to be executed on a grand scale. A special mirror cell jig was constructed which could employ five different motions when the mirror was ground and polished. Over 13 years almost of glass was ground and polished away, reducing the weight of the mirror to . The mirror was coated (and still is re-coated every 18–24 months) with a reflective aluminum surface using the same aluminum vacuum-deposition process invented in 1930 by Caltech physicist and astronomer John Strong. The Hale's mirror was near the technological limit of a primary mirror made of a single rigid piece of glass. Using a monolithic mirror much