It's all about the shrinkage.

It's been a few good working days since my last update. But the gist of it is that shrinkage matters.  Clay shrinking, wax shrinking, (sprained ankles shrinking back to their normal size) and then all the different ways to compensate for the above shrinkage.

For the heck of it, you get to look at these adventures of the last month from now... working my way back to when I was out of commission for my entire Christmas vacation.   NOT my idea of a good time.

Freshly washed, a variety of shapes considering they all came from the same model.   

I found pulling the sides of the molds back about 2-4 mm, made it easier to extract the original wax and to compensate for cooling.

This has not gone well... I soaked off the clay, and will have to touch up the waxes and try again with drier clay... it was a touch too wet then I made the "flasks"

But I did at least think to write down a wax weight in advance.

Here's the first wax for my brooches. The yellow one is one that I used for sand casting, it was so close to being 'right' that I reworked it and refined the shape by keeping the wax warm in may hands and stretching and pushing it into the shape I wanted.

This also went badly. Lesson learned, molds should never  be any drier than leather hard. Or you will get a lovely, dynamically aerated & highly textured wax that is impossible to remove. 

The ideal time to pour for 2-4 mm thick.

Can you see the hope? The Optimism... It was enjoyable while it lasted.

Before refinements.

It's messy, but it works.

How not to get things done during a week off.

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If you are squeemish I wouldn't scroll much further!

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