Ring making – playing with fire

After Russ spent the day babysitting a kiln, I showed up in the evening to do some more work – this time, we were playing with fire!

There are a lot of steps here, but we started with a tutorial on how to use an acetylene torch!

 

I took Russ’ wise teachings, and put on appropriate gear to be playing with hot things. We also did some practice spins with the giant spinning thing, to be sure that it’s action didn’t surprise me when it happened. (Photos of the spinning thing in a moment).

The first step was to remove any impurities in the silver we had. It was “scrap silver” that was sitting in a mason jar on his shelf. We placed it into the crucible and I patiently melted the silver. Russ added some flux, which I’m told “pulls” the impurities towards it. When the silver was liquid, we quickly poured it into a bucket of cold water that we had placed nearby. This process separates out the impurities, leaving us with little silver nuggets to use.

Now to the spinning thing.

The idea was that the investment goes on the right side there, and the silver goes into the holder there. Wind the spinner, melt the silver, let go, which forces the molten silver into the investment and into the shape of a ring.

Scrap silver in the crucible.

The next few photos were taken after the actual process had been done. While playing with hot things, and things that needed to remain hot, we didn’t want to be messing around with photography as well, so I’m sorry, we’re lying, these photos are staged. But they give the idea.

Lighting the torch!

Pointing it into the spinning thing.

My right hand has to hold the spinner in position. This process is very sensitive to temperature changes – the investment has been baking all day, and if it drops below a certain temperature it’s useless, so we had very limited time. Wind the spinner first, then melt the silver, then place the investment, then let go and pray.

The prayer, I found out later, is because this process has destroyed my wax. I think I knew it in the back of my brain, but I hadn’t realized until the night after we did this that all my hard work carving had been “burned out” while the investment baked. After we were done, Russ said that he thought he was more relieved than I was…I later told him that it was because I didn’t realize the enormity of the situation! If it hadn’t worked, we would have needed to go back to the save point and started again – including babysitting the kiln for 8 hours.

Russ said I should take the tongs and grab the investment to drop it into the cold water bucket and swish it around. Then he told me to reach in with my bare hands until I felt something. Cautiously I did — wasn’t this hot?! And I found this:

MY RING! The casting process had been near perfect. There was a minor indent near the bottom, and you can see a little out-dent in this photo, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed!