The yay was I had really really extraordinary luck last night in class, no doubt due to the fact that I had a momentrabbit 's foot present (two as a matter of fact, happily attached to the bunneh himself). Moment came along to take measurements of the instructor's jewellers bench for future reference in assisting me finally having one.

Normally when a lost wax casting is made, the wax is placed in something called investment. Investment is like a plaster of paris substance that surrounds the wax forming a mould. The mould is then placed in a kiln and the wax is burned out (the lost wax part). Once the wax has burned out of the mould, molten metal can be injected into it, forming the silver piece.

Time, as I've mentioned, was running out. So we did a little cheatery and I invested the wax last night and then burned it out all in the same night. Normally the investment is left to cure at least over night, if not for a week between classes so the investment dries out thoroughly. I didn't have time for that. My casting failed last week, plus I had other bits that needed casting. At one point a loud pop was heard and then smoke started coming out of the kiln. Amy, the instructor, went over and opened the kiln and a look of dismay came over her face and she looked at me and said "You'd better look at this yourself."

The investment is poured into metal cylinders about 2.5" in diameter. One of my cylinder's was laying on its side, and I could clearly see that a good third of the investment had blown out around the edges. Because we'd put it in wet and when the kiln was already hot (rather than wet as the kiln was coming up to temperature), the moisture turned to steam and blew escaped in hasty fashion. Picture if you will a cylindrical apple...now more like a cylindrical apple core...with my wax in the middle where the pips would be. Amy left it in the kiln because we couldn't see how bad the damage was and it was still smoking, meaning the wax was still burning out.

I went about doing the other things that needed doing to get this piece done. And then it came time to cast. Sam went first. He was casting gold, and his casting turned out fine. I had invested one piece last week and so we went ahead and cast that while the other moulds continued to burn out in the kiln. I had to try three times, something one normally doesn't get the opportunity to do, you more or less get one shot and if it doesn't work you're pooched. The metal kept sticking in the end of the crucible. The apparatus for casting is a centrifuge swing arm and uses centripetal force to inject molten metal, from a specially designed crucible, into the hot mould which is held in line on the outside of the swing arm by a bracket. I had to make the hole in the mould bigger and finally the metal went in on the third try. The piece cast, but not well. So, partial success. It can be salvaged with some jiggery, and I'll use it for some piece that needs a beaten or old look as the metal is quite pitted.

Then we pulled out the blown up mould. I got Amy to turn the thing over and pull the cylinder off carefully and we discovered that there were no breaches in the hull into the core of the mould where the wax had been. So we went ahead and cast it. Part of the mouth of the mould was blown off too making the possibility of the metal spraying out quite likely. I really should have taken a picture of it as it was remarkable how much of it wasn't there. As she pulled the mould out of the swing arm apparatus, the entire bottom of the mould crumbled away. And the casting worked!! Amy kept saying "unbelievable!!" with an expression of incredulity and disbelief on her face. Even as an instructor with a ton of experience she seems to have bad luck with casting. White gold castings invariably fail for her for some unknown reason. She was pretty much beside her self that my devastated mould worked when some of her carefully crafted and seeming perfect investments have failed. And then I cast my third and final mould and it also worked. It had crumbled somewhat, but nowhere near as badly as the other mould.

The bugger of it was, I ran out of time and couldn't finish the piece. Hopefully, my friend Deborah will let me use some of the equipment in her studio to get this thing done. We've still no idea if the program is being cancelled and if not where it will end up.