Well...

The first coat of Polycrylic resulted in a very interesting, curdled, texture but not what I want for this project. Although the can says apply a Rust-oleum topcoat after one hour; the website indicates one hour for oil and four hours for latex. 

Questions:

1) Did I not wait long enough to apply a water based topcoat?

2) Did I not spray a heavy enough coat for it to level?

3) Is it too humid?

4) Are the two products simply not compatible? 

I'll keep going with additional coats so I can test the initial concept of creating a hard barrier between the two waxes. Then, if that proves out, I'll try to resolve the curdling issue. 

Test plaster #2

Today I made a quick plaster mold of the bunnies that I carved the other day. You can see under the bellies of the red and green bunnies there was a little bit of tear out; likely caused by undercuts. I'll clean the plaster out and check. I doubt I will recast it since this just a test. Rather, I'll let it cure for a few days then try pressing some clay into it. 

Here I sprayed the other test wax model with Rustolium plastic primer. I'll let it cure for on hour then spray Minwax satin Polycrylic on top. I will apply thee coats with 1/2 hour between coats. I will then let that cure for a minimum of 24 hours before applying build up wax. My hope is the Polycrylic will provide a hard barrier between the build up wax and the base wax. 

Machinable wax

My first attempt at making machinable wax. 

Using rawkstar320's recipe and directions from Instructables, I combined paraffin and polyethylene. Then I used a wood lathe fitted with a vacuum chuck to turn the plate models (dark gray). I did the middle one first as proof of concept and made a plaster mold of it (white). The light gray plate was formed by pressing clay into the plaster. Ultimately, I plan to carve the wax and use a potters wheel to force the clay into the plaster mold. 

I tried carving the wax and found it only ok. I believe the mottling you see is due to some of the polyethylene not fully dissolving into the wax. This made for hard and soft variations in the final product. Also, none of it was as hard as the Matt green wax that I am use to carving for my jewelry models.  Is it possible they use additional ingredients such as microcrystalline or carnauba wax?

Wax build up.

I decided to try some quick carvings on the machinable wax. I built up three different waxes on the smallest prototype that I had made.

The first carving I used the gray machinable wax. It carved fairly well but was too close in hardness to the base wax. This made it hard to delineate when I was carving into the base. Also the placement of this carving was on top of some nearly undisolved brown and white polyethylene (PE) spots (above the hind quarters and below the belly) which really made carving difficult. When I was melting on the build up wax some of the PE got into the build up and the result was something that would not carve but more grabbed, stretched and tore. I ended up having to dig it out and melt in more gray wax. 

The second carving was with green Matt wax. It worked fairly well. The green wax carves nice although I was not patient enough to wait the requisite 24 hours for it to fully harden. It's color makes it easier to delineate from the grey base but it also was too close to the hardness of the gray wax. The placement of this carving was a bit better than the first but I still had problems with variations in the base material. 

By the time I got to the third carving I knew not to place it over undisolved PE. Here I used red Wolf (TM) WAX. It carved nicely and was easiest to delineate.

I will go ahead and make a plaster mold of this so I can see how the relief carvings perform with clay. 

I would like to find something that is 1) harder than the build up wax 2) I can machine easily on a wood lathe and  3) build up wax will stick to it. 

The 6 1/2" salad plate prototype does have some mottling in the area to be carved but does not have any areas of undisolved PE. So, I will go ahead and make a design and try carving it. If that does note turn out to be satisfactory, I can go ahead and remelt it or try another material. 

Yellow Beryl

I finished this ring yesterday. The stone is yellow beryl that a friend of mine and her husband mined at Gem Mountain in North Carolina. They also had it cut there.

Emeralds and aquamarine are also beryl. While I never cared for the color of emeralds; yellow beryl, aka golden beryl or Heliodor is quite pretty.

This piece is sold but if you would like to see similar heavy bezel settings that I have, visit my website http://www.jpstudioinc.com. 

Broken Pixie

About six and a half weeks ago I tripped on a cord in my studio and broke my humorous in half. I was hospitalized for three days and had surgery to implant a titanium rod. Keep your studio free of trip hazards. 

Working is now very difficult and painful but doable. 

I have been working on some casting which I can do without to much difficulty. Wax carving has been nothing but frustrating but, I did sculpt a model for a bunny napkin ring out of soft wax and cast eight of them in pewter.

I am also trying my hand at cuttle fish bone casting. I am trying to make a model for a heavy wall bezel ring.

The first one I made, I did not vent properly and it did not cast completely. I had also made it so the seem was in the middle of the ring shank…rookey mistake. 

The next one I made so the shank was flat (to be shaped, sized and soldered after casting). On this one, after two tries and getting nothing more than the button to cast, I decided the shank part of the mold was not thick enough to allow the barely hot enough bronze to flow into it. I think possibly a covered crucible would help. I do put a chunk of fire brick over the crucible during melting but have to remove it when I poor.  For the third try, I've carved the shank deeper and will use sterling silver instead of bronze.  Here is the mold. 

To the people of Lopez

This is the completed pendent "Blackfish". I cast it in sterling silver and used Max Black for the patina. It's dangerous stuff but I really like the look of it on this piece.  I plan on making another with a yellow gold surround and bail. This will be my first time doing bimetal casting…I am really excited to try it.

The bigger the glob, the better the job?

NO! Not when it comes to soldering. Excess solder looks sloppy and is unecessary. Cleaning it up is generally a painfully long process if mechanically removing the excess solder by grinding, sanding and polishing. Since this rarely results in a pristeen looking job, the best thing is to not use too much in the first place. 

If you are one of those that just can't resist the urge to use a hole bunch of solder, there may be an alternative method of cleanup. When I worked in electronics we used a product called solder wick to soak up  excess solder. Now that was low temperature solder so I had no idea if it would work but thought I would give it a try with silver solder. 

First I melted a big glob of solder on a piece of copper sheet, cooled and quenched it. Then I put the copper sheet in a third hand (to act as a heat sink). I put some flux on one end of a one inch piece of copper braid (Rio Grande p/n 132-526 FB 1/8) and held the other end in a pair of cross lock tweezers. Holding the fluxes end of the braid on the solder I put the flame of my torch on just the braid. When the braid got to the melting point of the solder, the solder melted and wicked up into the braid. Be careful not to over heat the fine wires of the braid and melt them into your piece. There will still be a thin film of solder on your piece but that's better than a big old ugly gob. 

Let me know how it works for you. 

Blackfish

Here is a carving of an orca that I did while I was playing hooky from doing inventory. I plan on casting him (her?) in silver then putting a black patina on the body and rubbing back the white patches typical of an orca. 

Honorable mention

Sail Away With Me

Here is my latest work:

Sail Away With Me

14k/18k yellow gold, 0.16 c tw chocolate diamonds

3" long

Icy

Thankfully I have ice cleats…the trip in from the studio would have been treacherous without them. 

Siq Armmor

Working on Siq Armor #3

Do over!

This is a ring that I cast several years ago. After setting the stone I noticed it was set on a slight diagonal. It was not enough of an angle that it looked like it was intentional so I decided to flank the the stone with smaller ones set in a way that it would accentuate the diagonally set center stone. After looking for years, I finally found a variety of small amethyst that would fit in the tiny space available on the ring shank. 

So...what do you think? Did I get the redo right?

Running rabbit

Here is a necklace I made from my impromptu running rabbit. I used Redicit to make the smaller ones which are 1/3 smaller than the original. I also made one more iteration which is 1/3 smaller than shown here, this size could be used for earings or charms. The blue stones are appetite and the brown ones are Poppy Jasper. It retails for $350.

Long time

It's been a long time since I posted. I have been busy though. I've been doing a lot of casting lately, mostly rings but I also cast the bunnies that I posted. Some of my students thought it was a bunny sculpture but that was not my intention but it is a good idea.

Ring

Here is one of the rings I cast last week. The casting did not turn out (it has a lot of voids) but I wanted to set it any way. I like the way it looks set with the spinal but the design is technically not very good. I should have allowed for a way to access the stones from under them. Without this, it is impossible to clean the lubricant (used during setting) from under them. It also does not allow me to thoroughly test the tightness of the settings.

I have some ideas on how to fix the other waxes that I made from the same mold; but I think I will just carve a knew one and be done with it.

Bunny tree

I have had a productive spring break. Here are some bunnies ready to be cast in bronze. The larger ones will be little figures de art and the smaller ones zipper pulls.

I made the small ones using a product called Reduce-it. It is pretty cool but I wish it would shrink a bit more than it does (maybe 2/3 dimensionally). I made one more reduction, which will be for charms) but I did not make a mold of it yet.

I also cast some rings last week but did not get them finished yet.

More rocks, less time

While visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Palm Desert this past week,we took a day and drove out to the Himalaya Mine's (www.highdesertgemsandminerals.com) fee dig site.  It was a beautiful drive over the Pines to Palms highway which winds serpentinesly up to the high desert.

At the dig site we met Terry and his dog Jackass. Terry, showed us samples of the different gems and minerals we might come across; tourmaline, quartz and crystallized mica (which has a pretty lavender hew) and how to screen for them. While we searched the tailings for treasures, Terry entertained us with stories about mining.

We had a great time an found lots of tourmaline (including an awesome blue one) a couple of quartz points and a water clear, gem quality piece of quartz. We also found a couple of egg sized pieces of quartz with tourmaline inclusions. serpentine

Rough cast

This is the rough casting of a bunny I did as a quick demonstration for my lost wax casting class. I used sticky wax and it was so sticky I could not be my usual obsessive perfectionist, which is a good thing, as it freed me up to be spontaneous. I think it turned out pretty cute. It is cast in bronze.