I think I am going to get committed because of this lost wax mania.  Mania is a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement, euphoria, delusions, and over activity. I have all the symptoms. Maybe it is a bad thing. To me it seems like a good thing and I really enjoy the “high”. Better than drugs I assume.

I often studied and thought of doing castings. Maybe because I was born and raised in a steel making town. Pour molten iron into a mold and out comes a new iron part. And it could be done over and over again.

I was first exposed to lost wax casting when I was a pre-teen and reading and studying all the model train magazines and information I could find. I was not so interested in running the trains but I sure loved reading and studying all the scratch building projects. Many of the small detailed metal parts were reported as being made by the lost wax casting process.

There must have been a lot of folks doing it as a cottage business to the model railroad market and maybe an offspring of the jewelry lost wax casting. The model parts were usually brass or white metal. I am sure it was done on spin casting centripetal machinery and perhaps something like plastic injection molding system.

I built some models from rather large white metal or zinc castings where I had to file off the flash, but I am not sure of the exact casting process.

On a small scale, how I am casting today could be used. But what I do is not anything near commercial production quantity. It’s quite an investment if all I wanted to do was a few model train parts.

I am in my comfort zone right now, just casting the pretty things I like to make. I really like working with the wax with both the CNC and manual carving. No subject or design is off limits, but it does have to fit within my tools and abilities.

Silver is my metal of choice right now, but I have experimented with brass casting. Just depends on what I am making. So much to try and do, it could drive me crazy…