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Delft Casting

Andrew Berry has done some fantastic videos on Delft Casting, see below. We incorporated some of his suggestion after we did our first batch. He has a whole bunch of YouTube videos which are well worth a look.

Here's how we got on....

We had a great casting session using the Borel Furnace a few days ago. The furnace reaches temperature really quickly so we can get down to casting without much of a wait.

Below are some mages of how we did it:

First we placed our bottom ring into a flat surface, in this case a piece of scrap vinyl.

Next we filled the ring with clay.

Then we packed it down with a plastic mallet. The mallet is light and doesn't damage the rim of the casting ring if we accidentally hit it.

Pack it to level with the top of the ring.

We then pressed the ring shank we wanted to cast halfway into the clay.
 
We added flour as a release agent as we didn't have any talcum powder and it work fine.
Placed the second ring on...
...and lined up the two marks on either ring.
Added the next lot of clay...
...and packed it down. We didn't fill it to the top as it was a small piece.
Carefully separating the two rings again, we then took out the ring blank and began creating the pouring hole and breather holes.

The image shows a single pouring hole and 5 vents.

We later modified this to a single pouring hole that split and fed opposite sides of the ring.
We carefully joined the rings backup, making sure to line up the two marks on each ring.
 
And then poured in the silver. The silver travelled out of the crucible a lot further than we thought it would.
After being allowed to cool for a bit, we then opened it up and saw the result.

The final result.

You can see how the silver has worked its way up the air vents. What you can't see too clearly are the two legs coming down from the main pouring hole (the part being held).

Now all have to do is cut it off and clean it up.