With my recent experimentation I have been thinking about how to keep the process still period whilst taking advantage of the new moulding technology. I might start considering doing things initially in a soapstone mould, and then moving over to an RTV mould for larger production runs where problems exist in the pouring of quantity. This would mean that the art form is still maintained whilst the ease of production makes large quantities easier. and RTV mould could be made so that I could cast 5 or 10 of an item at once.
On a different note, I would still like to attempt the pressure casting technique that I was told about one evening over some wine at a friends place where steam is used on the button whilst it’s still molten to create a small steam explosion and push the pewter further into the mould. More on this in the future.
Uh… yeah… let’s have a small water explosion while there’s molten metal around. ‘Cos that’s just so safe and sensible. Sounds rather like the wonderful idea I was reading about where people decided to centrifuge the molten metal… ‘cos it’s not dangerous enough as it is, it needs to be flying around in a contraption at a few hundred rotations a minute…
Aren’t you ever slightly scared of frying yourself? I’ll stick with my needle and thread thanks… I love the results of your casting, but it always sounds so dangerous.
You know, I’m looking carefully, but I can’t find the bit where it says “By the way I’ve moved to Politarchopolis”. You silly bugger!
Considering at the moment I’m finding every little time even just to catch up on emails… Keeping my LJ up to date which is mainly just used as a diary of my pewter experimentation has a much lower priority…
There are in fact people in Sydney who I haven’t gotten around to telling as it all happened far too fast.