Topic: [ANN] SaltySpitoon's Silver "Garlic" Bread Loaves DIY Wallets *In Stock* - page 3. (Read 1382 times)

Of course, the weather took a turn for the worse, so I'll have to hold off until tomorrow to cast. I got two bread loaves done, but they aren't cleaned up yet. I used a new casting technique, and they turned out quite a bit different, but I'm liking it. Will upload pictures when done.

This is also unfinished, so it looks really rough at the moment, but.
https://i.imgur.com/kkviDti.png

Well you can use literal sand, I have about 100 lbs of sand that I sifted through a very find micron mesh, mixed with equally fine bentonite clay, called greensand that you can use for sand casting. I also have some oilsands called Petrobond that I'm going to try casting into as well. With it, I'm going to cast a pan out of copper, and then plate it very heavily with silver.

The plastic cup is just something to pour the plaster into. With the bread loaves, I have about a half inch of clearance on each side. The molds are typically one use only, so even if they crack, its not until after the loaf has been poured and started to cool enough that it wont lose its shape. I've got lucky and got two pours out of a single mold, but most of the time, the silver burns some of the detail away, so I dont cast a second time. I will certainly get a good video for you this upcoming weekend  

Here is a little better of an example of mold making https://i.imgur.com/LsfiCOn.png

The stainless steel ring fits into the bottom rubber portion. The plaster will be poured in, and left to set. After that, when it dries, it goes in the oven, and the PLA will melt out, leaving a little tunnel to the cavity in the plaster. Silver is poured in, and then the sprue is cut off and the piece is sanded, polished, etc. Same deal as that youtube link I posted previously.



Also, I've done the microwave method before. Its obscenely dangerous. I disabled all of my microwave's safety features, increased the frequency of the "microwaves" by overclocking it, and it made the waves small enough to get outside of the microwave through the venting slits. Took me a minute to figure out why my face was getting itchy.

I didn’t mean literal sand, but my ignorance is showing.  Plastic cups was the piece of the puzzle I was missing.  I’m a bit surprised that size is large enough to shield against heat transfer, but again, I have no experience with silver and very little experience with aluminum in this area.  Would still love to see a video of the pour, mostly for my own educational purposes, but also because melted silver is sexy.  

Reminds me...  Wasn’t there someone who made their own silver bars by melting silver in a wooden mold using a microwave back in 2012?  These alternate DIY minting methods are cool.

Very nice!!

Awesome!

1) I hate flash
2) The big one isn't finished or assembled

The smaller one is about ping pong ball sized, the larger one is a little smaller than a baseball

https://i.imgur.com/BLcXGP8.png   - embedded below, but sometimes images don't like to load for me

A kilogram death star is awfully tempting, but then I would need a kilogram millennium falcon...!

I absolutely will. I was actually just thinking about asking you if you wouldn't mind. The model is finished, and I'm going to make the plaster mold the same day I do the garlic bread loaves, so it should be cast this weekend.

Funny enough, when I first printed the model for it, I messed up the dimensions, so I have yours, and then a model that is 4x larger. It'd be just under a kilogram of silver. I might make it at some point for grins.

If you want to video the making of the Death Star that would be cool by me!

And thanks for sharing the process, very cool!

Sand molds don't give very good detail. The end result is a really porous pitted and uneven casting. When airplane parts are cast in aluminum, they are made much larger than they will eventually be, because a team of technicians will remove half of the material to get it to what it needs to be.

I use investment powder, which is a high temperature plaster that jewelers use for making jewelry. The plaster is mixed, put under a vacuum to remove any air in the plaster mix, and then poured into molds (those are plastic solo cups that just so happen to be a suitable size). Once the plaster sets, I cut the cup off and you put the molds through a burnout cycle in a programmable oven that runs up to around 1400 degrees over ~8 hours to remove any water from the plaster and also to prevent thermal shock which would shatter the molds.

This video shows how it works pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4vSYcYwdNU

Interesting.  I envisioned you pouring the silver into a bucket of sand with the mold in it, but from the pics it looks like you're using something smaller than a bucket to keep each pour in a separate small rounded space, like a tube?  (I'm a wizard with the words, I know)

I'll get one for you this weekend. I have pictures I can upload in a few minutes once I find them, but I can get a video. I had intended on getting pictures of the whole process for those that found it interesting. As you can see in the pics below, it was wet when pouring these. Thats highly frowned upon, a drop of water into a hot crucible of silver will shoot molten metal out like a volcano. The humidity also effects pour quality, so a cold dry day with low humidity and a hot summer day with high humidity will result in completely different bars even with the exact same mold. Not saying the bars didn't turn out well because it was wet, just mentioning that completely replicating a bar is next to impossible.




I'll make sure to grab better pics this weekend.

I'd love to see a video of you pouring silver into the mold and then the removal process if you had such a thing.

Will do! I have every intention of having more made over the weekend.

Contact me when you have one available!

Its quite likely. I actually had a custom project request that I'm working on as well. Lots of fun things to make!

Any plans to make Salty’s Silver Spittoons in the future?

Sorry, I'm currently all out. I should have some more available starting this weekend weather permitting. I'll shoot you a PM when I have more available.

I'll take one, if any still available.

And with that, I'm now out of stock. I'll try to make more this weekend, weather willing.