Smelt, melt and all things molten!

Hello to all my lovely jewellers out there.

I know it’s been a while since my last post and I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get round to doing this.

So, what’s been happening? Unfortunately it’s my normal day job that has got in the way of my passion.

I have however, had a chance to experiment a little with sterling silver casting and my latest endeavour is drop casting in water.

There are so many way you can do it and believe me I have tried a few. Some have been met with a fat failure and others have come out pleasantly beautiful.

You can use almost anything to drop you molton silver on (except things that melt, e.g plastic, fabric etc). I do recommend that, you should have prior knowledge in melting silver or working with a blow torch, soldering silver. Nothing worse than being burnt with Molten silver. It blimmin hurts!

So what do you need to get started. It helps to get hold of a large tin (something like a old clean paint to or old large coffee storage tin), something that you don't mind getting damaged and in there you need to fill it with cold water.

Next you can get your ingredients together. So these are the casting shapes you want. I used rice noodles to get the thin noodle shape out of the silver. You can also use chickpeas, dried pasta shapes, anything of that consistancy.

Now you need your scrap silver that you want to melt.

If you are doing this at home, I do recommend doing it outside, preferably when it’s not windy. Not unless you want to burn your eyebrows off! It does get very hot when you smelting.

You need a crucible for melting the silver and long handle to hold the crucible.

Ceramic crucible for melting metal

Place your scrap silver metal into the crucible and then with a strong torch flame (i use a large butane torch which works perfectly well for melting silver), start to melt the silver until it become liquid.

Keep your water tin near your with or without you material you want your silver to take shape with.

Once you have the metal turn to a liquid consistency, it is ready to be poured into your choice of ingredients.

Now this is not an exact science. As I have found out on numurous occassions. Metal has a mind of it's own.

My attempts basically burnt the noodles and didn't really take the shape at all.

The best castings I made were by just dropping the molten metal straight into the water. It creates fantastic shapes against the water.

From little pebbles to a water splash shapes. Here are some I made into pendents and rings. The shapes you get are amazing and so unique as you don't know how the molten metal will behave in water.

Pouring the metal over noodles

The good thing is, if you don't like it, you can melt it again and do it until you get the shape you desire.

I have made a few pendents and earrings using this technique, which I will putting up on my website really soon.

Water casting, droplet pendent

Have a go yourselves to see how you get on with it. And share you experiences. It will be great to hear the different shapes you have managed to create using this technique. Just a quick note, please be very careful when dealing with molten metal. If you are not sure how to do it, get some advice from a silversmith or better yet, attend the many beginners silver workshops and classes that run around the country. You'll love learning all the new techniques working with silver and the tools you need to do it.

I still attend them and i've been making silver jewellery for 3 years now and I still am learning new things every time.

Hopefully i've inspired some of you silversmiths out there to experiment a little with your sterling silver. 

It should always be see where the silver takes you not where you take it. Metal has a mind of its own and it will always try to take a shape that you least expect. Sometimes it creates really unique pieces and others don't turn out so great. But that's the beauty of it. You always make use of all the pieces that are left over by other melting them again or by combining them with other pieces of silver and other metals.