Friday, April 26, 2013

wood mold









Finally had a successful ingot pour.  I have tried a couple of shallow graphite molds, but no luck.  Seems the graphite sucks the heat out of the molten sterling really fast which kept giving me a partially formed ingot with a blob on top.  Went back to the first video I saw on YouTube that inspired this project and decided to try a simple one time wood mold.
Poured almost perfect on the first try.  Cleaned it up with a wire brush on the drill, then various grits of fine sandpaper, some 000 synthetic steel wool, and a light polish with the drill again and a buffing wheel.  Two old junk sterling fork prong ends plus some other bits turned into a nice chunk at 46.15 grams - worth $33.29 as of tonight (not including TFL added value).  76,91,46,0,B,.21

7 comments:

Dale said...

I found an interesting setup on EBay that requires no crucible and will give uniformity to your ingots. If you can craft one of these you'll be stylin.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-4-Ozt-Silver-999-Gravity-Pour-Graphite-Mold-No-Crucible-No-Dish-2013-/300897113081?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item460edd93f9#ht_9803wt_964

John Wells said...

Dale...thanks for the link. I've seen that guy's vids. Caught the tail end of one of his auctions and just missed out on getting a bid in on time.

Dale said...

He has his contact information further down on that link. He sounds very approachable and will probably hook you up on a special order.

Wm. Pugh said...

As a ex-silversmith the graphite mold Must be hot and I mean hot when pour.
Like the idea of wood thou, never did that!
Rosharon Buddy

Allen Hare said...

Amazing...

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