from fork to ingot

Canvasman34's pour itself mold worked like a charm.  Just got it in the mail today and had to try it out.  Took awhile with my makeshift firebrick oven and lucked out with just enough silver to fill it.  Pretty rewarding when it finally went bloooop.  Now to build an insulated box to cook in for a faster melt. The fire brick really sucked the heat out...they got up to 750° on the outside.   Paul has plenty of info in his videos to try.  Just ordered 2 sq ft of kaowool to keep the heat in.  Can't help but wonder how many bites of food were had with this fork before I turned it into the official ingot # 13001.  59,72,35,0,C,0

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