Of Staves, Knobs, and Boobs

[shanmonster]

I think I've been stood up by Karate Neil. That's ok, though. I whirled my staff around for a while outside, and my shoulders are already sore. I don't know why my arms tired so quickly. I suspect I'm getting sick again. I was enormously exhausted, and oddly dizzy, last night.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I took f00dave to the metal studio, and did his first cuttle casting. Well, I did the casting for him, but the carving was his. He did a thunderbird or a phoenix, and it turned out quite well. He wants me to set a little stone for its eye, and add some wire streamers from the tail. I can do that.

I spent most of the day doing other casting techniques. I cuttle cast the loop shape for a toggle clasp, then made the toggle from a stick pearl. I think I'll have to redo the wirework on the pearl, though. It doesn't go through the loop quite easily enough. I also did a whole wack of water castings. I plan on making pendants with them. I've already finished three pendants. One has Czechoslovakian crystals, one has a piece of angelskin coral, and the other has gold glass beads and a gold-coloured piece of sterling dangling within. One of the water castings I soldered to a band ring. It's somewhat cup-shaped, and is begging to have a pearl or some other stone post set in the depression.

Water casting is both fun and easy, and produces gorgeous organic designs. No two are alike. Although most of the pieces evoke the image of seashells for me, one of the castings looks like John Wayne Bobbit's severed knob.

Remember those second-century Roman domed earrings I made (originals here)? Well, here are a couple of pictures of my reproductions:

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Nice work! I think you did a great job capturing the spirit of the Roman earrings.

With the water casting, are you doing it just straight into water, or using an immersed cloth to catch the metal? I've seen some really interesting shapes coming out of the latter.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm doing the casting straight into the water. What sort of cloth do you use, and how close would it be to the surface?

[cissa.livejournal.com]

As I recall, the metal (I've seen both silver and 22k) was poured into a dishtowel once (not the terrycloth kind), and a piece of muslin the other time. The cloth was wetted and then suspended- I forget how- as a sort of hammock in the bucket, with its lowest point a few inches below the surface.

The theory was that this would make a nice, large, clean lump or the metal. I haven't seen it work that way yet; it's ended up in some pretty cool organic forms, though. of course, no one involved has made a habit of doing this; it's always someone wanting to try it because they saw someone who does do it regularly succeed, or heard about it, so I'm sure some of the finer points were missed! Still, the results were cool, even if not what was intended.