Casting Workshop Part I

Yesterday I spent the day in a Casting in Silver Workshop.  Lost wax casting is a really cool process for making jewelry. You can watch a video on it here, but basically you make a wax mold of the piece you want (what I did yesterday), an impression is is made of the wax, and then the impression is filled with silver (or whatever your metal of choice may be!).  Above are my sketches for the two pieces I made: an "arrow" bangle and a "point" ring.

First up, the arrow bracelet.  Here I am cutting the arrow parts out of green wax.

  Assembling the arrow (by melting the pieces of wax togeteher).

 Onto design #2. Here is the design sketch and measurements, plus the initial cut-out of my ring.

I used this ring sizer to find my size. I want to wear the ring on my middle finger, so I went with a size 7.

 Sizing the wax ring on the ring mandrel.

 Adding texture to the ring.

This is the cute lamp (flame) that I used to melt the wax or to heat tools. At the very end of the day I burned myself! Ouch! You can see in this photo that the cap/snuffer isn't on properly and from my angle it looked like the flame was out. At the end of the day as I was tidying up, I tried placing the cap on more tightly but the flame had been heating the cap for HOURS when I touched it. So I lightly burned two fingers and heavily burned my thumb (complete with blister!). Lesson learned: Snuff the flame out carefully and precisely!

I can't wait to see the final product and share them with you guys! My wax pieces have been sent off to be cast in silver and I'll get them back in 3 weeks.  I'll make sure to update you on the final stages and the finished product.  
xojj