The lost wax casting method has been used for over 6,000 years.
There is even evidence of this method being used in the Indus Valley Civilization as far back at 4000BC. It is still used worldwide today and the actual method itself has changed very little since ancient times.
This is the way we do it at Sneaky Bird. We will take you through the steps. The first step is the artist must carve the design they want to make by hand in hard wax.
Then we create a rubber mold using the original carving as a master copy.
Now we inject a soft melted wax into the mold to make a wax copy of the original design. We wait for the wax to cool and then pop it out of the mold.
Next we assemble what is called a "tree." We attach the wax copies we made to a cylindrical piece of wax. When we later burn this wax away, the molten metal will replace the wax in this exact shape.
Now we can make the investment. We pour investment plaster over our wax tree and use a special machine to remove any air bubbles.
Time to bake it in the oven! By burning away the wax, you create a cavity in the investment in the exact shape of the former wax tree.
We use a special jewelry oven and the total time the investment may spend in the oven can be up to 10 hours. The temperature depends on the metal and can vary from 800 to 1200 degrees Farenheit.
We heat up the investment a little more to make it similar in temperature to the molten metal we are about to pour into it. t is now ready to be filled with the metal of your choosing.
We use a special vacuum seal machine that ensures the metal fills every crevice of the investment and eliminates any air bubbles.
Once the metal has cooled and hardened we submerge the entire investment in water to break the casting materials and free the now metal tree.
Now we cut the individual metal pieces off the tree and can prepare them for any soldering to smooth the edges.
We file the metal jewelry pieces, and polish them to perfection first by hand and after by machine.
This is a time consuming method, but it is the time tested method of creating high quality jewelry. We believe in creating small-batch made to order jewelry to eliminate waste. Using this traditional jewelry method ensures top quality pieces every time and we are proud to pay our respects to the long history of the lost wax casting method.