Success! Though I didn't remember to take a final picture. The molds came out perfectly, and I learned that the silicone is softer than I thought it would be. I poured a dozen casts in each, and there's really no appreciable wear on the molds. Yay durability!
I took this before I started really cleaning up the sprues and flashing. You can see upper left has a lot of flashing where some pewter snuck through the edge of the mold. Happily, this is easy to clean up, and some file work was all it took.
I wanted to do a dark chemical deposit on the metal, that I would then polish off the easy-to-reach areas. My experience is with liver of sulfur, which immediately darkens copper, brass, nickle and silver. You'll notice tin isn't on that list? Yeah. Over the course of an evening I got a "maybe kiiiiiind of aged?" look. I may try gun bluing compound next, but I didn't find anything definitive about that. At least some work with 000 steel wool got a slight bit of contrast, and the design itself didn't DEPEND on two tones.
Overall, a success. I have some ideas on how to incorporate a pendant-hanging hole in the sprue of my next work, and we'll see if it turns out.
I took this before I started really cleaning up the sprues and flashing. You can see upper left has a lot of flashing where some pewter snuck through the edge of the mold. Happily, this is easy to clean up, and some file work was all it took.
I wanted to do a dark chemical deposit on the metal, that I would then polish off the easy-to-reach areas. My experience is with liver of sulfur, which immediately darkens copper, brass, nickle and silver. You'll notice tin isn't on that list? Yeah. Over the course of an evening I got a "maybe kiiiiiind of aged?" look. I may try gun bluing compound next, but I didn't find anything definitive about that. At least some work with 000 steel wool got a slight bit of contrast, and the design itself didn't DEPEND on two tones.
Overall, a success. I have some ideas on how to incorporate a pendant-hanging hole in the sprue of my next work, and we'll see if it turns out.