Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Piece’

ok so heres the thing i need a piece of metal shaped in certain design(something similar to wrench basically) but since i dont know how do i go about making that piece im wondering if theres any shops in chicago that would do that for me if anyone knows im able to pay for it so it doesnot have to be free but how much they would charge if anyone also knows the price.thank you

This may be a crazy question, but I want to have a flower that is made out of plastic, casted in sterling silver. Is this possible?

I know the lost wax process, but was wondering if I could have plastic materials casted also?

The Miriam Webster dictionary defines an artisan as one that produces something in limited quantities often using traditional methods. We have seen artisan bread, artisan cheese and artisan beer in recent years. The term has come to connote something unusual and of high quality.

Artisan jewelry is designed and created by an artisan and either made as one-of-a-kind or limited edition presentations. It is not enough, though that it is hand crafted or one-of-a-kind. The jewelry customer should still expect a high level of creativity and craftsmanship using the best quality materials.

Creativity

A piece of artisan jewelry should stand out from the crowd. Artisan jewelry is not a stone set in a purchased casting or a collection of purchased charms on a purchased chain. It is a piece of jewelry that is designed and created by a skilled artisan.

An artisan piece may use an unusual combination of materials or interesting juxtaposition of techniques. It may be an utterly simple, fanciful, concept or extravagantly detailed piece of jewelry. Frequently we see an artisan’s jewelry evolve over a period of time as he or she pushes the techniques and materials to another level and explores the possibilities for an innovative expression of his or her vision.

Craftsmanship

The piece should be well finished with no burrs, plier marks or rough edges. Any ends of wire or stringing material should be tucked in or covered so they do not catch on anything or become damaged.

The piece should be sturdy enough to stand up to the rigors of being worn. This sturdiness has to do both with the construction of the item and the materials used. A substantial weight for the size of the piece is an indication that the designer planned for wear ability of the piece.

Any solder joints should be smooth, well fitted and secure. Solder should match the metals it is securing. Any prongs should be sturdy, well placed and in good condition to hold a stone without damaging it or catching on your clothing.

If it is wire jewelry, the wires should be parallel, not damaged and fastened securely with the ends tucked in and filed smooth.

Artisan jewelry is created one piece at a time and that gives each step a chance to be inspected and adjusted before the next step is taken. This should provide you with a quality, long-lasting piece of jewelry that is unusual and appealing.

Materials

Artisan jewelry can be fine jewelry, bridge jewelry or fashion jewelry. Any of these three classifications of jewelry can be artisan made, individually designed and created by a skilled artisan. Fine jewelry is generally made of precious metals and precious or semi-precious stones. Bridge jewelry is normally created with semiprecious metals and semi precious stones. Fashion jewelry is composed of base metals, fibers, plastic or other synthetic stones and components. Today’s artisan jeweler has access to an almost unlimited supply of unusual and interesting materials to work with in creating the jewelry. While artisan jewelry may not always hold intrinsic value just from the materials, an artisan made piece has high value due to a unique and individually created combination of the artisan’s creativity, craftsmanship and choice of materials. If the piece is signed, that is a plus. You never know what “name” may break away and become valuable as a collectible.

Before crafting handmade jewellery two things, casting and making of jewellery by hand, must be understood. This will help you to decide whether making of jewellery by hand is worse or better, than casting.

The handcrafted jewellery is designed by hammering, bending, twisting and soldering the metal in desired form. For instance, while making a plain gold wedding ring the jeweller will start off by having a lump of gold metal in an undefined shape and will melt it down. Then he will pour the melted gold into a steel container which will harden the liquid for giving desired shape. The liquid will be turned into a thick bar. Then jeweller will roll the piece up to a time that he will finally get a long flat piece. After that he will cut down the pieces in a length that can be easily fit in customer’s finger. In the next stage he will hammer the piece to give a shape of ring and will join the both corners to create a ring. After that, he will give it a nice circular shape and polish it. Then recommended gems or crystals will be fitted into the ring. Now the gold wedding handmade ring is ready. This whole process might take one hour or little more. The whole process will start again as mentioned, if another ring is required to be made.

So the hand made jewellery piece will take hours or may be days to craft while casting it will take minutes for casting numerous identical pieces. In hand made jewellery the labor cost is a main factor. On casting, only the cleaning is required and nothing else and short time is spent in casting method.

For casting, in the jewellery trade the Lost Wax casting method is used as main method of casting. In this method, a master piece is prepared first and this master piece can be used to make unlimited copies of the jewellery item. In casting method large number of rings are made at one time but in hand made method only one piece is made at one time. So it can be said that the piece of handmade jewellery is stronger and heavier because of the techniques used like hammering and filling which make the piece hard and qualitative.

In casting sometimes the bubbles remains inside and missed by the manufacturer, which make it a less quality product and less durable. Nowadays this kind of problem can be easily controlled by highly sophisticated equipments but it could happen. The casting method can also be said a duplicating method by which a manufacturer copies number of rings of a piece.

So comparing both methods, the hand made piece of jewellery can be a unique thing and an expensive one. Casting method is cheaper and many people can enjoy the same product. Handmade jewellery is long lasting, durable and harder as compared to jewellery made with the casting method.

Have you ever looked at a piece of your jewelry and wonderd just how the jeweler made it? How do they create the fine detail in a piece of jewelry and what about the smooth swirling shapes. The fact of the matter, is that every piece of fine jewelry starts out being made from wax. Its called the “lost wax” casting method and it is amazing to see from start top finish.

The first step is to create the piece out of sculpting wax, which is the same wax that dentists use to make crowns for peoples teeth with, because dentists use the lost wax method for casting gold crowns. Then the wax piece is then encased in a can that is filled with wet plaster and allowed to cure and dry. After the can of plaster with the wax piece in has dried it is then placed in a hot kiln so the wax “piece” in it can melt and burnout of it.

What is then removed from the kiln is a hunk of plaster with the hollow shape of the wax piece left in the middle of it. The jeweler will then place the hunk of plaster in a device that spins around and uses centrifugal force to push molten metal down into the hollow shape inside of the hunk of plaster. It will then be allowed to cool and then the plaster will be chipped away revealing the piece of jewelry where the wax piece once was.

It will be cleaned up and then any details will be carved into it or welded onto it using a jewelers delicate tools and a jewelers torch. If any stones or gems are to be added to it, that will be the last step that is taken. It is then given a final polish and it is done. This method of making jewelry has not changed in thousands of years.

If you are tossing around the idea of having a piece of custom jewelry created, there are a few things that you need to know first. One thing that you will want to know is that there are jewelers out there that will work with you but it will cost you if they have to do all of the design work.

The design work is first done in wax, because jewelry is cast using the “lost wax” casting method. This means that you will want to present your wax sculpture to the jeweler “ready to go” that is that all that has to be done is to encase it in plaster, set it up for a pour and then pour it.

A jeweler that is going to do the casting for you will gladly give you some sculpting wax to work with. You can’t use bees wax, because it is too soft and paraffin wax is too hard and brittle. Sculpting wax is the same wax that dentists also use and it comes in solid chunks and in sheets.

Working with wax takes time and practice and you will find it rather hard to work with. Pieces don’t stick together easily like clay, so you have to “work” two pieces of wax together carefully. Use fine dental type sculpting tools to work on your wax piece and handle it very carefully.

One thing that you will find is that the warmth of your fingers will cause your wax piece to bend out of shape when you handle it. The solution to this is to keep your piece in the refrigerator and periodically dip your hands in ice cold water when you are working on it. Make sure that nothing gets into the wax when you are working on it, because dirt won’t melt out and will end up being stuck in your piece of jewelry.

The design work is first done in wax, because jewelry is cast using the “lost wax” casting method. This means that you will want to present your wax sculpture to the jeweler “ready to go” that is that all that has to be done is to encase it in plaster, set it up for a pour and then pour it.

A jeweler that is going to do the casting for you will gladly give you some sculpting wax to work with. You can’t use bees wax, because it is too soft and paraffin wax is too hard and brittle. Sculpting wax is the same wax that dentists also use and it comes in solid chunks and in sheets.

Working with wax takes time and practice and you will find it rather hard to work with. Pieces don’t stick together easily like clay, so you have to “work” two pieces of wax together carefully. Use fine dental type sculpting tools to work on your wax piece and handle it very carefully.

One thing that you will find is that the warmth of your fingers will cause your wax piece to bend out of shape when you handle it. The solution to this is to keep your piece in the refrigerator and periodically dip your hands in ice cold water when you are working on it. Make sure that nothing gets into the wax when you are working on it, because dirt won’t melt out and will end up being stuck in your piece of jewelry.

Silver is extremely malleable and ductile and as such, it is highly preferred by silversmiths for making silverware and silver jewelery. Silver craft takes years to learn as an apprentice to a silversmith, or in some college or university offering such courses. Perfection comes only with practice. However, the basic techniques can be learned by anyone who has patience, and the right tools!

Piercing: Silver is cut to form a basic shape or to make a decorative pattern with a piercing saw. When creating a pattern, a small hole is drilled in the silver sheet to allow the blade of the saw to be positioned. The blade is then attached to the piercing saw, under tension. Blades can be coarse allowing fast cutting or very fine for detailed work. The blades are delicate and can be easily snapped. As such, work must be done slowly. The blade is held vertically and metal is moved slowly to make curves or corners. Blades are also lubricated by passing them through beeswax, which makes cutting smoother. The work is supported on a bench peg which is screwed to a workbench having a V cut into it so that both the sides of the cut are supported. Small shavings of metal called lemel are collected from under the piercing onto a leather or paper cloth, which are then recycled into new silver.

Soldering: Pieces of silver are joined by soldering. Silver solder, that comes in various alloy mixes but mainly containing silver, is used for soldering. Silver solder melts at a very high temperature and so a blow torch is used. The temperature required to melt silver solder is very close to the temperature at which the piece being worked upon would itself melt. To manage the temperatures, soldering and other torch work is usually done in darkness so that the color of the metal, as it heats, can be used to measure the temperature of the piece. Silver solder come in soft, medium and hard versions having lower, higher and highest melting points. Pieces where multiple soldering is required use hard solder at first, and work down the grades with subsequent soldering so that each addition does not melt or distort the previous one. Lead solder should never be used as its high temperatures cause the solder to run all over the silver, damaging and making it useless.

Annealing: The more a piece is worked, the harder and more brittle it becomes. Repeated annealing keeps silver soft, malleable and easier to work with. It is done with a torch in darkness. Silver is heated until it gives soft pinkish red glow, which is the point just before melting. The piece is then immediately cooled in cold water, which freezes the molecules into the alignment they were in when almost molten, and thus makes it easier to work. However, working with a torch leaves fire stain on silver which is removed by pickling.

Pickling: Fire stained silver piece is placed in acid bath, mostly sulphuric acid, to remove any oxidization before working on it. Pickling salts are used for works done on smaller scale. The pickling solution is kept warm to speed the process. The piece is then rinsed in running water, and cleaned with pumice powder to remove any remaining traces.

Shaping: The work is shaped into finished form in many ways, depending on the desired shape. Tubular shapes like rings and bangles are formed on mandrels that are held in a vice, while the annealed metal is hammered with a mallet of wood or hide. Bowls and other such curved pieces are domed on leather sandbags, wooden or metal doming blocks, using wooden or shaped metal hammers.

Polishing: Polishing is a long process, where a piece is rubbed with progressively finer wet and dry papers to remove any tool marks. It can then be wheel polished, polished with a fine polishing mop on a pendant drill, or barrel polished, where it is soaked in a soap solution with steel shot and rotated for 10 minutes or so. Polishing makes the piece smooth and shiny, free of all marks.

These were the basic techniques of silver craft. Silversmith, however, adopt many other advanced techniques also like hand fabrication, lost wax casting, die striking, and electroforming etc. For beginners, initially its better to work in a base metal such as brass or copper, as they are much cheaper metals to allow for mistakes.

I was just curious. Does a piece of jewelry cast in sterling silver devalue the piece itself?