Metal Casting Project

I've been molding and casting things for a few years now, but up until this summer, it had only been plastic casts.
However, I became curious about metal casting and decided to teach myself.
My first successful one was a 1.5" tall metal flower charm.


Picture copyright William Crawford 2007

The sculpt was Sculpey 3, made with dentist's tools and generic wet clay tools. Sanded, molded in a 10-to-1 RTV silicone[Micromark] single-sided mold. This picture was an early painted acrylic cast to check the mold's detail quality. I then melted lead-free tin solder [melting point: 449.F] with a propane torch and poured several different casts of the flower, with varying degrees of success. Some were beautiful but some just came out crummy. I believe that when the metal was not hot enough, the smaller details were lost. On the other hand, when the metal was overheated the silicone mold [withstands up to 520.F] began to bubble and burn.

Still, I was left with 8 good quality casts and managed to learn a bit about low-temp metal casting along the way.