My new hobby - Silversmithy

I've recently started to tinker and try my hand at making jewelry. Has anyone here tried silversmithing or blacksmithing?

I've yet to get into advanced stuff. I'm just doing basic wax carving. The whole process is simple. It's a lot of fun. I don't have all the proper tools and I've had to make a few things. I read a few books and such about jewelry making and I think I'm on the right track so far.

*The pictures were taken with my cell phone so the quality isn't that great*

This is the forge that I recently built. It's pretty damn basic. The main part is a brake drum from a diesel truck. I took a 1/4 inch thick piece of steel and used it as a base. I drilled some small holes in it for the air to go through. There's a T made out of 2 inch gas pipe welded on the bottom. One end runs to the metal plate, one goes to the fan, and one faces the ground so that ashes can pass freely (I have a rubber cap on it for when the fan is running). I am not sure where I got the fan but it works great and I wired a control knob (potentiometer) to it to adjust the speed of the fan. All of this is stacked on top of cinder blocks. I use charwood in the forge. You can buy this stuff at Wal*Mart. Usually a coal train passes through town and they park it overnight, but one hasn't been through recently and I haven't been able to snatch up actual coal.



I welded together some 1/2 inch rebar and I use it to hold up the flower pot. I place my plaster mold under the flower pot. That's my friends mold in the fire. It could explain why his mold cracked...






The whole wax carving process is very easy. You can buy wax tubes in various diameters. You simply cut off a piece the size of what you want your ring to be and you carve... I have a sizer that I use to carve out the center to the appropriate size. Once your wax model is done you attach a piece of sprue wax to it. The sprue wax is just a small stick of wax that once melted out of the plaster mold it leaves a void that acts as a channel for the molten metal. Anyway, the sprue wax with the attached ring is placed on a rubber base and then a short piece of steel pipe is placed over the top. There's special plaster that you can buy for jewelry making. It's very fine and has a satin finish. The plaster mold is placed over the top of the fire and the wax is melted/burned out. This burnout process takes quite some time since I'm using a forge to do it and I don't crank the heat up all the way to start. Professionals usually use small kilns that heat it rapidly and speed up the whole burnout process.

The plaster mold needs to be the same temperature as the melted metal or else it will cool and screw us the casting. In the third picture my graphite crucible is sitting up top. Inside it you can barely see but there is melted silver in there. Those other two things in there are the molds that my friend tossed in. The next part is the fun part. Once all the wax is melted out of the mold it's ready to accept the metal. The metal is heated up in the crucible. The plaster mold is quickly put into a halfass sling. I'll hold on to the end of the coat hanger and then my friend will pour the metal into the mold. I'll quickly start to spin the sling around. I don't have a proper centrifuge so the sling will have to do for now. The whole purpose of that is to produce centrifugal force which pushes the metal into the plaster mold.



The plaster mold is allowed to sit for a bit and then it's put into water. The plaster dissolves and whatnot and then you can see what you produced.

This is the first ring that was made. It's made out of sterling silver and there's a little heart carved in it. The ring was given to my friend and the three gemstones are her birthstones. The bottom stone is an opal and it represents the month she was born, the top left stone is a pink sapphire and it's for the day of the week she was born, and the last one is a garnet and it's for the time she was born.


This is the ring on Jayme's lovely hand.



The ring turned out okay. There are a few pits on the outside and on the inside, but it was my first try. I spent a few hours polishing it with my dremel and some jewelers rouge. Jayme loves the ring so that's really all that matters.


I doubt anyone cares but it's a lot of fun. I just wanted to show off what I did and see if anyone was into silversmithing. I plan to branch off into blacksmithing once I purchase some tools and build a better forge. I am going to try to make knives.

These last pictures are nothing special. I just thought they looked neat. It was getting dark and we were about to quit for the night. I stuck a piece of rebar into the forge to see how hot I could get it.