[Jewelry making - Article 00300] - [Orchid] Delft Clay Casting

[Philip H Quanjer]

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    Hi Bob, Without more specific details of the problems you encounter,
    and of the sort of objects that you are trying to make, it is
    difficult to decide how to improve on your technique. However, in my
    experience by far the most important thing is that the silver is
    really very hot, and that you continue to heat it while pouring it
    down in the funnel. For flat and thin objects the ratio of volume to
    surface area is very unfavourable, so that heat is lost quite rapidly
    to the Delft clay and your mold may fill incompletely. In the case of
    thin, flat objects it is my experience that it pays off to see to it
    that the Delft casting rings are level (I even check it with a spirit
    level), particularly when objects are relatively large so that the
    silver has to travel an appreciable distance: one part up-hill if the
    rings are not level, another part down-hill, where the former
    obviously is at a disadvantage. In the case of larger and flat
    objects position the funnel in such a way that it will be about at
    the centre of the mass of of the silver object. My wife and I
    initially had great difficulties in using the technique for making
    thin objects that we could then enamel (cloisonnE9 or champlevE9
    technique), but by paying attention to these points our failure rate
    is now low. We have kept a log of all our failures, analysed these,
    and this boiled down in a detailed description which you can look at
    if you wish (home.planet.nl/~quanj013, click on the Union Jack for
    the English text). 

Good luck, Philip Quanjer from Holland.

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