Fun with Cuttle Bone Casting!

Randy Terra

Last weekends Cuttle Bone Casting Workshop was so much fun! Erin House started off the workshop with a look at some very inspiring work from metalsmiths using the technique in their work and then we dove right in to making molds. Although this process can be somewhat messy, it's relatively quick and cleans up without too much hassle.

Here students create a flat surface by rubbing two pieces of cuttle bone together and then press objects into the mold. Randy is using a swizzle stick out of his incredible collection that we had a great time looking over. Thanks for sharing Randy!

Next Erin House demonstrated how to melt the metal (the fun part!). We used sterling, bronze, and copper to create several different alloys.

 

Here's Randy making his first pour! And the results from that swizzle stick:

On day two we moved on to three part molds. A bit more challenging, but they allowed for undercuts and a more developed second plane. Here's a two finger ring using a three part mold from the assistant Erin Austin:

And since we had the equipment out, we decided to run next door to the hardware store for a broom so we could try out some broom casting. Everyone agreed that the resulting forms were from another planet (krypton perhaps).

For information on upcoming workshops check out the Workshop page of the blog. Next up: Enameling!
http://northcoastmag.blogspot.com/p/workshops.html