I was able to cast my koi cuff braclet in sterling silver this week - how exciting! In my previous class I soldered a massive sprue at the base of the bracelet and then set the mold. I ended up keeping most of the bridge as support so there will be a considerable amount of silver I can recover from this casting. One of my classmates took a final photo of the wax piece just before I said goodbye to it for good.
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| Preparing the piece for casting |
There was a fair bit of prep before the actual casting process took place. I had a bar of fine silver that had to be cut with copper to make sterling silver which is harder and more durable. It took a painfully long time to melt down such a large amount of silver and my hand was pretty crisp from holding the torch.
Here I am with my instructor Shao getting ready to melt the sterling silver beads with the torch. In the right photo I'm adjusting the flame before pointing it down into the centrifuge.
After the piece was cast I had to wait another 20 minutes for it to cool down before plunging it in a bucket of water and retrieving the bracelet. That felt like a verrrry long 20 minutes. Here is the bracelet with the massive sprue sawed off (which took an hour with a tiny jewellery's hand saw!).
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| Bracelet just after casting (fine silver coating) |
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