This ring was born in our store this past month. It isn’t just a simple process of scraping a chunk of silver off a block and gluing a gemstone down inside. It takes just a bit more work (and equipment!) than that…

Here you can observe- in painstaking detail- the conception, gestation, and final delivery of a custom designed ring from Wexford Jewelers.

It all begins with a wax model. This is extruded sheet wax that has been bent into the primary form, cut to shape, cut to size, and hand heated. Wax can be brittle, and working it- ever so gently- in the hands for a few seconds makes it more pliable, which will result in a cleaner finish.

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Here I am adding detail- again, extruded wax. There are different kinds of wax- injection, extruded, & carveable. Extruded is exactly as it sounds- it is pushed through a form for various shapes, thicknesses, and applications. Although the majority of our waxwork is done with injected forms, this particular ring began with extruded.

The rest of the detail and construction of this ring would take up a bit more time than we want to spend today. I will post a full wax construction project in a future post, today we are focusing on getting the wax to be metal.

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Here is the finished wax. You can see the prongs, the detailing, and yes- there *is* a stone in there! All obsessive compulsive readers are right now wondering if we’re going to forget, and leave it in there. Well, we are. Not, however, because we are dumb. That stone is a sapphire, a member of the corundum family, and smaller sapphires can handle heat. Sometimes, not all the time, we cast sapphires and/or rubies right into a piece. They have to be small, have properly built holes underneath, and be free of major inclusions. This one meets that criteria.

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These are mold bases. Made of rubber, they are engineered to flex onto and off of the flasks.

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This is a flask. There are a couple of kinds of flasks, ours are designed for vacuum casting, which we will learn about soon.

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Using this somewhat primitive alcohol-burning lamp, Jason heats up a sprueing tool…

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…and attaches the wax to the mold base. That ‘stick’ connecting the ring to the mold base is called a sprue. Sprueing is a delicate art, one that we are all continually mastering. The sprue has to be big enough for metal to flow in, but not so thick that it cannot be cut off. If the sprue has any sharp turns, the molten metal can actually break shards off as it flows around them, but if the sprueing is done thickly and haphazardly, you have a weighty mess to clean up.

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Jason attaches more items. We rarely, if ever, cast one piece solo. For the amount of electricity, time, and work that go into casting one flask, it would be almost silly to do them one-off. We multitask as often as possible.

The mold base is very carefully slipped onto the flask, and our little items have a home. Now the flask is ready to fill with ‘investment’- once the holes are plugged,

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…with a little bit of masking tape!

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This is the investment. It is a silica-based plastery substance, a light powder that is mixed with water. Jason always wears an industry respirator while doing this, as silicia does not naturally flush out of the lungs.

In this photo, we’ve mixed it and are currently de-airing it- simply removing the bubbles in a vacuum machine.

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Pouring off the mold. This must be done quickly, as it begins to harden immediately. But it also must be done not so fast as to: 1) trap air bubbles that will deface the designs, and 2) possibly snap or break fine wax detail. Tricky, tricky.

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…pouring,

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A second de-air process removes any little bubbles that may have trapped under detail or in little crevices. This vacuum machine serves a host of uses.

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During the de-air process, the liquid investment appears to ‘boil’. Its just the air seeping out.

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Four flasks, filled and ready for de-waxing. Each flask will be cast in a different metal. Now we let the molds sit for a bit and harden up, in preparation for the next step…

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After about an hour, Jason gently pries the rubber mold base off the bottom, and sets it aside for next week’s cast. Most casting tools will be re-used for decades.

See the wax poking out of the bottom? Soon this will all melt away, leaving a cavity shaped exactly like the designs. The sprues work as feed lines for wax to go out and metal to go in.

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The four molds are placed inside the steamer unit. This does pretty much what it sounds like- fills with steam, which melts the wax right out of the investment. This is the part where I begin to get just a touch nervous if I have a big job- once that wax melts out, if something goes wrong, it’s back to the drawing board!

Next: The cast. Part II

Part III of this series can be found here.

For more photos of this process, visit our flickr photostream!