My granddaughter (age 6) has been watching my silver work and wax carving. When she asked me, "What are you going to make for me, Papa?" What was a grandfather supposed to do? Of course, design one of these.

She had mentioned that Rose was one of her favorite names, so there is a little secret in the design of this little girl pendent.

I had a run of bad casts trying to master the vacuum assist lost wax process. I have solved the problem. (I hope) The picture on the left is two separate Sterling silver castings I made last Sunday. As you can see they came out perfect. Happy, Happy.

The center is two tags I made using CAD, CAM and CNC. This is two separate versions as I was experimenting with the code. The owl is the family crest animal. The tags are about 1" x 2" x 1/8" and each weigh  a few tenths of A gram over a troy ounce. About $17.00 of Sterling silver at today's rate.

The last picture is just a couple of geegaws I and my daughter made. The acorn cap is my daughter's. I think she is planning to make a glass bead for the nut part.

I have created several Celtic theme silver Lost Wax Castings because they may look a bit complex, they are still rather easy to carve. I have also kept the pieces fairly large as that keeps it easy for me to hold in my hands.

This is the second carving of this design. The first one I did in green wax but it was lost in an incomplete cast. I made this duplicate in a couple of day and used Wolf's gold colored wax. It's a bit harder wax but that was not important in this second try.

You can see the wax and how it was sprued for investment. The next picture shows it after the cast and disinvestment. The last is with the jump ring installed and all polished up. The second picture where it looks all white is after it comes out of the acid pickle. It is totally clean and the white is how silver looks before it is polished.

I am proud of myself today. I made the decision to move my creative wax design work out of the hostile summer environment of my garage workshop and into the air conditioned comfort inside my home. The reason is that I am now working wax with 90 to 100 degree ambient work conditions which are not quite suitable to the medium.

In my new location I will not have to be working in the swirling air currents of the powerful shop fans that do nothing to reduce temperature. The fans disturb the gentle flame of the alcohol lamp when I am trying to work with hot wax.

All of the grunt work will still be done in the garage workshop. That includes all the metalwork itself. It’s only the master model (in wax) that will be babied while being designed and developed. I will feel and actually be, a lot cleaner with the wax design and creation being separate from the main shop. I can work on it quietly at midnight if I choose to do so and not feel that I am isolated on another planet.

I also do not want to stop what I am designing in wax and have to reset my low bench in the shop for filing and finishing silver and other metal work. At the Craft Guild the two kinds of work were kept totally separate to avoid contamination. I have to do the same.

I ordered a small jewelers bench (shown) like I used for wax work at the Craft Guild of Dallas. It will only be used for wax work so it doesn't need to be massive, but it will keep me and the wax filings organized.

I have to arrange my office for the new purpose. I have a LOT of obsolete items and books cluttering up that space that will be a pleasure to either dispose or put into permanent storage. Hmm… I think that is one and the same. The space will be better apportioned for what I am doing today and not what I did decades ago.

I haven't posted here for awhile. That's because I haven't been making very many, uh... let's say NO, artsy items for awhile. I have been busy but in other ways.

Here is the latest addition to my art studio. It's a mobile cart where I will do (but haven't yet) high temperature heating and melting of metals and where I can do lost wax castings using the vacuum assist method. Centrifugal casting could be an alternative but not if this process works good.

Details of the cart build can be found HERE.

I have several wax carvings ready for investing and casting. I also have a whole lot of wax projects ideas I want to start carving. I feel that I have to have the system ready for "loosing" the wax I have been carving. This is a big step to that end. I have the kiln ready and some flasks and investment material on order. Also a lots of other "bits and pieces".

I find there is a lot of preparation and tooling required when getting fully involved in lost wax casting process from start to finished item. But I love every bit of it!