Wax Sculpting & Casting

Duration: 3 days

Create your own jewellery by sculpting and manipulating various different types of wax, each with unique characteristics and techniques! Learn mould making techniques, and have your wax jewellery magically transmuted into silver using our centrifugal casting equipment. This course is appropriate for people of any skill level.

 

 

Lecturers:

Teresa Speer holds a BA (hons) in Jewellery. A qualified teacher, Teresa has been in the jewellery trade for over 30 years, and has been teaching jewellery making for over 20 years.

Robin Fletcher has been teaching this course with Teresa for over 15 years.

 

 

Techniques you will learn:

  • How to make jewellery using sculpting wax, melting wax and carving wax
  • How to cast jewellery using the Lost Wax casting method
  • How to turn your castings into beautiful finished jewellery
  • How to clean, file and polish jewellery

 

Jewellery you will create:

  • Pieces of jewellery of your own choosing, hand crafted by you

 

Materials costs:

The materials cost is for the Argentium Silver used to create your jewellery, at €1.50 per gram, equating to the weight of the finished silver jewellery.

Argentium Silver is an amazing material, which is much easier to clean and than Sterling Silver. Argentium Silver is also more pure than Sterling and can be hallmarked to a higher standard.

 

 

Day 1:

On this course, you are given the opportunity to create your own designs, with ideas and assistance constantly on hand.

You will create a piece of jewellery in each of 3 different types of wax, and then a fourth piece in whichever wax you prefer.

You will experience manipulating soft sculpting wax by hand, using melting wax to develop a form, and also carving into hard wax using a variety of tools.

Your 4 wax pieces are then mounted onto wax trees, and you are taken into the casting workshop and shown the procedures of the Lost Wax casting process. Your waxes are then placed into a burn out kiln to begin the overnight Lost Wax process.

 

Day 2:

On the second day, you are taught about alternate mould making materials as well as different mould-making techniques.

You will then witness the casting of your waxes using the centrifugal casting equipment. You will release your jewellery, which has now been magically transformed into silver.

You will use a variety of cleaning, finishing and polishing techniques to turn your cast pieces into finished jewellery.