The job was accepted more to actually get me off my arse and out of a rutt in Sydney, but it’s should be quite fun. I’ll be repairing commercial electronics products such as TV’s, DVD’s and Audio equipment. Guess we’ll see how it goes… Stay tuned for more exciting news.

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.

I tried out two types of new moulding techniques last night.

The first was using a plaster like mix to create cheap blank moulds for carving, as an alternative to soapstone. The plaster needs some more experimentation, it seems to not heat up like the soapstone, and whilst being more insulative for larger pools of molten metal, it takes the heat out fast enough to stop the flow. This I shall continue to experiment with, as I want to develop a small paired blank mould that I can mass produce easily and use for teaching.

The second was the RTV Silicon moulds I was playing with in my last post. The RTV mould stuff is fantastic, and I’m annoyed that I didn’t actually try it sooner, like about a year ago when I discovered the stuff. I need to get myself some small to medium sized kitchen scales so that I can more accurately measure the ratio of compound to catalyst, and I need to remember to mix it more thoroughly, but the detail that can be achieved with this stuff is fantastic. :) Unfortunately my cutting out skills aren’t as good as my carving skills, and I ended up making an error that later cased the failure of the mould. Just a small failure, but one that noticeably modifies the end product. The first casting from the mould was reasonably detailed, but the third started to get more detailed as the mould started to warm up. This is great stuff, and when I can work out a better method of making the moulds I shall start making saleable items this way.

I got made redundant when I got back from Festival, so things have been a little slow with me working out what to do next. Luckily the redundancy allowed me to clear a portion of my debt, which freed up some financial stress. ;) This in turn allowed me to splurge a little on some things I have been meaning to try, such as RTV Silicon moulds.

RTV Silicon moulds are a liquid Silicon that hardens at room temperature and is suitable for moulding pewter directly into. This allows me to experiment with an almost lost wax technique without having to re do the lost wax mould each time. Basically I end up with a reasonably flexible mould that allows all the detail of the lost wax process, with the re-usability of the hard carved mould technique..

Currently I’m just experimenting with it to see how useful it can be, but if all goes well, it might be able to produce some really great stuff.

As usual with anything I do… I’m kinda learning by experimentation, as opposed to actually being taught, so stand by for some notes and stuff in the next few weeks.