How Did It All Begin?

Learning about steam casting, for me, begins with taking a metals class at City College and receiving an assignment, a research assignment. The options, research an artist or research a technique. I opt for technique. I considered a few other things, Mokume or enameling. I flipped through our Metalsmith book and noticed Sling casting? Huh? Sling Casting! Below is an example of what Sling Casting looks like. Yikes!


(If you'd like to know more about this image and Sling Casting, you can buy Complete Metalsmith ISBN:1-929565-05-4. It's a great book.)

Like the Three Little Bears, this one was a little too soft, this one a little too deadly, hmm, where was the one that was Juuuusssstt right? On the next page, Steam Casting.
From what I understood of the process it seemed a little scrappy, involved just enough danger to make me feel like I'd accomplish something, and had enough potential for positive outcome to risk trying. However, I didn't have enough information on the process to totally commit. I decided to check the Internet for more detailed information. Eventually, I found a great site by a guy named Don Norris. After reading his site, I decided this was something I definitely wanted to try out. That's how it all began.

Where Do I Go From Here?

I received the initial thumbs-up from my teacher. I'm sure on Monday she'll discuss all the potential hazards and dangerous situations I'm about to encounter. I recruited a friend with a torch and a garage. I have a list of things to collect like a flower pot and an empty tuna can. Today, I went to the swap meet in Concord to see if I could find an old hot plate. Watch the main video below and see if I found it.
(Sorry about the little thumbnails that pop up. Watch at your own risk. I have no idea what's on them)


(The song: "If I Can't" by the musical artist 50 Cent. Buy it like I did.)

Don warned finding an old hot plate might be difficult. I still have hopes of finding one. What is plan B? E-mail, I am sending out e-mails to people I know asking if someone has one. Someone has to have a grandmother with a hot plate, Right? Maybe I'm gonna need a plan C?

Time To Take a Leap!

Since I last posted, which feels like forever ago, I've been putting off this project. I slowly began to wonder what did I get myself into? However, I've snapped out of it, and today it was time to get the ball rolling again.
I never could find a HOT PLATE. I opted for a small propane BBQ. I changed the tuna can into a dog food can when I realized they were the same size. Today I had some other items to pick up.
First, I went to Oakland to get the Satin Cast I ordered. This is a picture of the cool and uber friendly ladies at Otto Frei handing over my goods. They're awesome!


Next, I had to make my way over to Sausalito! It's a rough thing to HAVE TO GO to Sausalito! Richmond bridge here I come!

I haven't been overly excited about buying silver for this project either, I don't know why. Maybe in the back of my head I was hoping silver prices would suddenly drop? No, I think it's because I know absolutely nothing about buying silver except that it's silver and can get costly quick. I could have been a coward and just gathered my silver scraps to cast. I could have been ultra brave and checked out under-the-table sources, but like I said before, I have NO idea what I'm doing so that seemed like I might be asking for trouble. Eventually, I opted for this place in Sausalito.


I can't even begin to tell you how cool this place is. I called them in the morning, spoke with Tom, to kinda get an idea what I was getting myself into. Tom was so informative about buying silver and the current prices. He also told me how he remembers when silver was $48.00 an ounce. After I heard that, current prices seemed pretty affordable. If that's his selling strategy it's a good one! Anyway, when I arrived Erika buzzed me in. She weighed my wax and gave me a general idea of how much I should buy. In the end, I left richer than I anticipated so I headed over to caffe Trieste to enjoy a cafe au lait in the warm spring sun.


I sat at my table and examined my handy work. This is what I plan to cast, a cowboy. Why? I don't know. It's what I came up with. All I know is, it's not a seahorse! Ha, Ha, ha!
As I drank my coffee, I overheard the lady next to me telling her friend about a sex cult she once discovered in the Marin hills. Uhh. . . Ok, I listened in on the events, but after a few minutes. . . let's just say it was time to go! This wasn't the sort of steam I was looking for! Where does someone go after a moment like that? San Quentin of course!


Why put this side trip in a blog about steam casting? That's a good question. In my opinion, unexpected and unplanned, side trips like this are part of the process. You never know what will happen, or where you'll end up while trying to create something. Point San Quentin is a lovely small town with a view like this. . .


Time to move on, back to east bay.

I've been debating if I should use the casting flask I purchased, or try the tomato can idea. What do you think I decided on?


Yes, I'm crazy! The tomato can won out! Only a person who doesn't know what they're doing would do this! I took the casting flask with me because I wanted to get a can similar in size to the flask I purchased. Now, I needed crafting clay. Where to get crafting clay in Orinda. . . Rite-Aide?

I'll admit this is a crappy picture, but if you look close you'll see a surprise in the pet section. There was a hummingbird flying around in the store! I hope he gets out. I found crafting clay, but it was more than I wanted to pay. I'll try tomorrow. Until then. . .

Push, Hope, and Oh Well!

Today I put a lot on my agenda because I was hoping to cast tomorrow. This is the Peete's coffee that was suppose to fuel that agenda. What's wrong with this picture? It's me RETURNING home, just after I left, because I forgot something! UGH!


Went back to Rite Aide, in Orinda, to get the overpriced modeling clay because I HAD too! Not happy about this!


Next stop, Ocean Campus. There was an open studio today. I needed to pick up some wax sprues. I was also hoping to catch my teacher to go over how I planned to sprue the cowboy. Bay Bridge here I come!




Now here comes the make or break moment. I got wax sprues, but not my teacher. Someone I was not familiar with, and who wasn't familiar with my project, was in the studio today. I knew that was a possibility. It's not like what I'm doing is rocket science, and any wall I was hitting was my own doing. So what's the delima here? Do I really have the time and/or knowledge to sprue and invest this thing right today so I can cast tomorrow? Do I disappoint my casting partner who is counting on me to do this tomorrow? Who I might also add has the torch I need? Or do I wait until my teacher comes back so she can double check my sprues? If I wait, I'm pretty sure it means I have to wait another week to cast. I need to think, I need a taco, I need to go to the mission. Maybe I'll find an answer there?

I got my taco and I got Bruce Lee! Who better to find when push comes to shove?

What did I decide to do?

I decided to disappoint my casting partner and wait for my teacher to come back. I could have risked it, but the bottom line is I would have been working against myself and increasing the odds that my cowboy would come out like a piece of you know what. So today gets to kick my a$$. I like my cowboy more than I realized and I really want it to come out. I've realized that casting is not for those who like to procrastinate. There is too much time, effort, and money involved. Do I think there is a point when you can push the limits of the process? Ya, but it's after you know a thing or two. I don't! Tomorrow I'll teach my casting partner cuttlebone casting and hopefully she'll be able to loan me her torch next weekend.

Steamy!

I decided to look up other steamy things. This project has made me see steam in a different light. I think it's easy to underestimate the power of steam, but that's a mistake. History, with it's broad range of the good, the bad and and the ugly, owes a lot of it's story to the power of steam. Not only has steam moved incredible amounts of steel machinery, but it took on the additional load of moving people, cargo and in a lot of cases the earth's surface. On the lighter side of steam, it has even entertained us by fueling our music. You have to wonder, in this day in age when we struggle with new forms of energy, is steam worth investigating again? I'm just say'n.

Something Steamy. Forward to about 31 seconds. For some reason it has a slow start. This film is amazing. I can't imagine what it must have been like to see something like this coming down the railway! WOW!


Think steam power is just a thing of the past? Think again. This video is LONG! Watch it and let it load, then you can skip through it. According to the person who made it, this was made in China 2008. Hmmm, I thought they were sucking up tons of oil right now? What's up with all this steam power? What gives?


Everybody Calliope! Music made with steam via a calliope!

Borax

This is Miss. D, my casting partner. She was understanding about postponing until next weekend. She purchased a new crucible. A crucible is a crucible, right? I suddenly have doubts when I realize her crucible looks nothing like the one at school. Well, we both decided we should coat it with Borax anyway. Neither of us knew what we're doing, what the melted Borax glaze was suppose to look like, so it was like two monkeys trying to figure out what a car key was for. In the end, we got the crucible reasonably coated. I think we have to add a little more glaze coating before we cast next weekend. I'm worried the Borax cooled too quickly. I know some of the "glaze" we created cracked as it cooled. When we heard the little "pings" we covered the crucible to slow down the cooling. At first, we thought we might have cracked the crucible, but then I noticed it was the borax glaze we heard. I double checked the crucible, when it was cool enough to handle, it seemed to be fine. Whew!

Getting Ready

So, I'm starting to get nervous. This weekend is IT! No alternative. Today I had a few more things to collect. I am very nervous about the crucible Miss. D and I worked on last weekend.I am not convinced we are on the right path with this item. I looked online to see if I could find a crucible like she has. I think she has a fused silica one. I'm not sure what that means in terms of this project, but I'm thinking about buying a crucible similar to the one at school, which I believe is a mixture of silica and clay? Anyway, I am going by Otto Frei, depsite the fact I don't know EXACTLY what I need. I know the golden rule is go prepared and know what you want, but I need some ideas! I went to Otto Frei and Larry was nice enough to help me out. I ran my project by him. Of course, I got the "Are You Crazy" look, but he gave me some good ideas. I left with a carbon stick, and a block of charcoal to use as a back-up crucible. Then it was off to the Dollar store to get some tongs. Hopefully the tongs aren't made of lead and they can handle the heat of the flask after burnout. Then over to HomeDepot for a propane torch.

I don't know if this looks like it took a lot of time to collect all this stuff or not, but it did. There are several trips to different places, and a fair amount of moola on this table. Realizing how much money and time it's taken to collect all this stuff makes me wonder how practical this process really is. However, I guess like all discovery and invention, the beginning is always the most labor and cost intensive until you get your methods and tools figured out.
When I returned home it was time to get started. I previously made a sprue button in class but for some reason I wanted to double check it. I ended up making it a little less deep and a little more flat where I would ultimately attach the sprues. This is a picture of it at the bottom of the "flask". I kept a 1/4 inch space around the edge so the investment would fill in, this way the steam has nowhere to push except down into the casting.

I decided against casting the cowboy. I made design changes to the cowboy and I decided this just wasn't the time, or the process, to cast him. I made a cheesy little heart. I discussed how I was going to sprue this with my teacher and in the end I have gone down a VERY different path than what we discussed. It seems SURFACE TENSION is a big part of this technique. Instead of using one large sprue, I am using a smaller sprue cut in half to help create some surface tension. This makes sense to me, but makes me nervous. I'm not sure if I have created enough tension and the sprue seems so small comapred to what I was going to use initally. C'mon STEAM! Show me the big bucks!

So things are looking good as far as I can tell. Seems like it's time to invest this sucker. I wrapped up the tin foil with rubberbands. Time to invest!

I followed the 2 to 1 ratio. I didn't feel too nervous about doing this. However, after I got in the thick of it, no pun intended, I wasn't sure if I got the right consistancy. There were a couple of lumps towards the end, but I didn't feel I put any in the flask. I tapped the sides to get bubbles out. Oh, did I mention I forgot to use debubbler? Oh Well! Too late now. But I did wear a mask while I mixed this stuff! Safety first!


The only problem I had was a small leak, but it didn't last long. When it was all said and done, the investment seemed to be curing and I finally had a chance to take break. I was feeling like things had gone well. Tomorrow I would cast!

Success in Failure

I woke up this morning excited to check on my invested flask. I took off the aluminum foil. Hmm, something doesn't look right. Wait a minute, which way is up with this thing? Huh? Why do both ends look white? One of them is suppose to be yellow. Oh ya, there was that leak! Maybe I just mildly covered the yellow clay with some investment? Scratch, scratch...umm, maybe this is the wrong end? Scratch, scratch...ok, this isn't the end either? What the? Yes, that's when pure terror set in! What the heck happened? Where is the clay sprue button? This wasn't suppose to be a disappearing magic trick! Turns out, I didn't attach the clay sprue button to the aluminum foil and the whole thing, all the clay and wax, had a nice trip to the middle of my flask. There was no way it was going to work! I am not happy! So much for casting today!



I went over to Miss. D's house and gave her the bad news, but I told her I would still teach her how to cast cuttlebone. We worked on that for about four hours. We tried to smooth out the melted borax in her crucible. Disaster! I don't know what the heck was going on. We did the best we could and left it at that. Next, I showed her cuttlebone casting.


She designed a small pendant. We decided to try the crazy crucible. She had some leftover scrap silver she wanted to use. We put the scraps in the crucible, heated it, heated it, heated it, heated it. . .get the picture? There were chunks of it that just wouldn't melt! We finally gave up on it. I think the metal she was trying to use was in some way contaminated. I decided to get one of my charcoal blocks out and told her to get me some silver that had never been melted. I carved out a little crucible, like Larry from Otto Frei suggested, and melted down a little silver, in the charcoal crucible, to see what would happen. It worked! The silver melted in no time and looked great! This was good news because the charcoal crucible was my back up plan if the real crucible didn't work out. Thank God I knew something was going to work!
We collected a some more of her silver scraps and prepared to cast her cuttlebone. The silver melted smoothly and we were on track for a good casting. As she poured the silver in the cuttlebone she got nervous and poured half the silver in the wrong place. We were so close! Well, she learned the process and I know in the future she'll get it! I had to go home, I had to re-invest again.

Look familiar? I did everything over and made sure the clay was STUCK to the bottom!

I went through the whole process again. This time I made the investment a little too soupy! I was trying to avoid the previous clumps. In the end, the investment started to cure. I waited about an hour, I had to check if there was yellow clay at the bottom of the flask. I was never so happy to see the color yellow! It seemed like I got it right this time. I hope everything else is still attached!

Tomorrow I cast. Well, unless some other sneaky surprise happens!

Do or Die!

Today is the day- CAST DAY! First thing this morning I dug out the clay to see if the sprues survived the investment process. It looked like heaven! Two little black spots indicating the investment found its way between the sprues, and the sprues stayed where they were suppose stay. Yeah! This is a picture of what it looked like.

I took a metal hanger and made a handle for the terra cotta pot that was going to act as the "kiln"

Then I made the kiln, a terra cotta pot wrapped in aluminum foil. I only wrapped the outside. If you wrap the inside, the aluminum melts.

Now it was time to fire it up! I got a little nervous when I noticed the burner, the kiln was sitting on, was turning red hot in color. It looked like it was going to melt. I decided to just keep a close eye on it. If it looked like any part of it was beginning to sag, then I'd lower the temperature. Shortly after I fired up the kiln A LOT of moisture started to drip off the flask. I was a little worried about this because, the investment I used for this flask was "soupy". I kept watching it and slowly I started to see the brown wax coming out. I was expecting some smoke, but I didn't get as much as I thought I would.

Here's a little smoke. I am including this picture because the fact that I didn't see more smoke also added to my nerves. I expected to see more smoke, when I didn't, I began to worry the flask wasn't getting hot enough to melt out all the wax. Uh oh! (The small amount of smoke you can hardly see is on the top right of the kiln.)

Once it seemed like things began to level out, I left Todd in charge to watch things. We had a garden hose and a fire extinguisher close by. The kiln had been on for about a 1/2 an hour and we still had another hour and a half to go.

While he was watching the kiln, I needed to make the caster. This would contain the wet paper towels, that would provide the steam. The caster is made out of a scrap piece of wooden closet dowel and an empty dog food can, I attached the two with a screw and Voila! At this point, I took the three paper towels, lightly wet them, and put them inside the caster.

I carved out a crucible to melt the silver in. I also put my carbon stick and borax near by. I decided to melt a couple of beads of silver to get a feel of the propane torch and learn how the silver was going to melt. It turned out to be a good idea because the torch was a little wild. If I had the flame up too high it blew the shot right out of the charcoal crucible, plus there was a small breeze that made the flame inconsistent. We had to re-light the torch a couple of times. This proved to be good information later down the road.
I took some time to practice going through the steps in my head and then I waited, for about 15 minutes for the burnout to end. While I waited, I decided to visit the daffodil fairies and ask for good luck!

Time to cast! I put my silver, more than I really needed, in the charcoal crucible and started to melt it. I thought it was going melt a lot smoother and faster than it did. I think that was because there was a lot more silver than what I practiced melting, and my torch kept going out even more than before. Luckily, because we expected this, Todd was right there to re-light it immediately. As soon as I got the silver melted I stopped to put some Borax in it, and then heated it just a little more.


With the button standing by red hot, I turned off the kiln and put the flask in position. I put the red hot button to the side of the sprue opening and heated the sprue opening and the silver. The silver slipped into position on top of the sprue openings. Things looked good. It was time to put the caster in action.

I could feel the force of the steam under the caster. I really felt like this was going to work. I kept the caster in place for the recommended five seconds and then took a peak. When I saw the sprue button I began to have doubts it worked. It wasn't evenly round and there was a splash of silver to the side that made me nervous.

While the flask was cooling down for five minutes, I decided to see what it looked like under the caster. I expected it to be really burned out, but it wasn't.

Time to see the results!

The flask reacted the way it was suppose to. The investment boiled out. I reached down into the bucket to get my cast out. All I seemed to have was a sprue button. There was no sprue attached to the button. I began to think the sprues were too small and the silver never made it down, maybe there was too much surface tension? My heart sank! No! really! My heart sank! I reached in again and found the heart at the bottom of the bucket! I couldn't believe it! It casted! I think the paper towels had too much water in them and somehow the silver from the sprue shot back up. I suspect this because the sprue button is slightly hallow underneath. It looks as though air, or steam was forcing the silver back up and out. That's my guess, and it could be way off base. Whatever happened, the heart made it.


All this, for this cheezy little heart!


"Some see beauty in the face, but true beauty lies within the heart."
-unknown
Hey, a cheezy heart needs a cheezy quote!