Beginners Guide To Cuttlefish Casting in Silver

hi I'm Andrew berry and welcome to at the benches YouTube channel something we haven't touched on our YouTube channel and that's cuttlefish casting we're going to show you how to do a very very simple cuttlefish cast today nothing elaborate nothing fancy just something that is really quite simple this is a brilliant technique to practice really cheaply and you can also recycle your unwanted pattern or unwanted but your broken bits of silver jewelry the unwanted scraps that you may have lying around in your tray or little bits and pieces that you can't really talk utilize in another project now let me use our silver our scrap silver it is important to make sure that the silver is clean so what do I mean by clean what you don't want to do is to have anything with solder that is on the silver it has to be clean not quite fresh but free of any solder because the solder may lower the quality of the silver it may also impart different properties because you're melting like a solder alloy in with the silver alloy and you may not get a nice cast so preferably you want offcuts these are off because I've got here there's something that I've torn out of a bezel there's some little bits and pieces here that I've drilled that I've stamped and so forth a little strip that I've cut off in an off cut these sort of bits of silver are ideal you're gonna need more silver than what you actually need to cast with and we'll come to that just a little bit later but let's turn our attention to the cuttlefish that we're going to be using you can buy cuttlefish at a variety of stores in your particular country you can buy it from your jewelry tools suppliers but what I like to do is to visit my local pet shop where I can touch the cuttlefish sounds weird I know but touch the comité bit like that yeah touch the cuttlefish and look for the best pieces because I think they're sold buying wait so you really want to get a good substantial bit of cuttlefish I've got quite a few in front of me here I've got some quite large varieties like this here this is crop and if you don't know what cuttlefish is it is the bone left after the cuttlefish fish dies and these get swept up upon the beaches around the country as well and around the world one side has got a hard shell the other side a little bit softer and what we can do we can utilize this to cast with and this is an age-old technique that goes back thousands and thousands of years I like to choose my cuttlefish I like to choose them quite nice thick and plump you get cuttlefish that are very very thin and quite narrow I tend to go for the thicker ones because it enables you to use one piece of cuttlefish for one cast you have two smaller pieces two thinner piece for then you're gonna have to have two cuttlefish to put together for your cast but nice thick plump ones with a nice sort of thick belly in the middle are absolutely ideal and what you need to do before you go any further is to go onto your patio or go outside against the nice stone flat stone wall and is to rub the cuttlefish and what we need to do you've got the hard shell this side what we need to do is to flatten this softer side this is belly side until we get a nice flat area and I've done that already I do this against my neighbors war when he's not looking and he's always wondered what's this white powder is on the floor it's my cuttlefish haven't told him I'm not going to either and we've got a nice flat area along here the cuttlefish because it is a skeleton it has the most gorgeous gorgeous texture and this texture is only really obtainable by using cuttlefish when you put these away saying it you can repeat the texture by casting something in cuttlefish and then getting a mold made of that in rubber and then you can inject it with wax and loss wax cast and so forth I'm not interested in that this is a one-off pattern and it's ideal for doing large rough organic shapes or even what we're going to be doing today is actually carving into the cuttlefish and in the past I've done this with a few students and also for a couple of films on out of the bench which is our online training website out of the bench comm these art is a simple couple of cutouts and I'll be doing the similar sort of thing today these are almost like sort of like arrowheads like prehistoric arrowheads you can see it the texture on the back of the pieces here from obviously two different cuttlefishes kettle of fishes cuttlefish you can only use this cuttlefish once once you've used it it burns it gives off a weird and nasty smell some people say it's a nice smell some people say it doesn't smell at all but it does give off a very nasty fishy sort of smell and you can see the textures that we've got on the back of these pieces cast in different cuttlefish texture is completely different but very very unique to cuttlefish casting all right so let's crack on we've got this cuttlefish it's nice and flat I can utilize this fairly short piece of cuttlefish and I can cut this one directly in half and we can use those two halves to make our mold we're going to be carving into this particular piece of cuttlefish today let's just cut this in half approximately in half the soft part is really easy then you've got a little bit of a harder scattered shower across that's like they're certainly cut that in half we have now got two halves that we can put together just gonna make our cuttlefish mold several ways you can make using cuttlefish what we've done in the past is made in got sort of using cuttlefish and what we've done is made in God shape almost like a chunk of chocolate I think this is done in some Daz clay or you can carve out of Wax nice bulbous hearts as we've got here you can use wax you can carve out this is a project I did for think Sharon's husband who works for us this was a nice under this in delft clay I founded this in delft clay but you can still use this in cuttlefish and also you can even use ready-made rings that as I've got here and we can also cast this type of ring as I said to you the finish is quite rough if you want it perfectly smooth and mirror-like finish you're gonna have to do quite a bit of filing but this is a brilliant technique to use that texture I'm going to be doing something very similar to these sort of arrowheads that we've done in the past and what we're gonna do we're going to have a one-sided model just means we are going to carve into one half of the cuttlefish and the other half will be flat and we will just simply put that upon the back you have to allow for a pouring Channel when it it comes to the cuttlefish casting as most casting techniques that you can do so you need a quite a large area to pour the silver the molten silver into the larger that pouring channel the more silver is gonna get into your mold fast and that's exactly what we're after when you come to design your piece don't have the silver going into the smallest thinnest narrowest areas so in something like this Arrowhead for instance that we have we have the silver coming down in this direction from the top this is the largest area the silver will go in and then it will fill the smallest area down here what you don't want to do is to have it this way up and for the silver to come down into the smallest narrowest point because you want to get the silver into this piece as fast as possible and likewise if you are making a ring like this this is the thickest area not much point having it this way and trying to get the silver to come down into this small thin narrow area and to come all the way around to try and fill this larger area you would have the sprue and the pouring channel in the head here that's the biggest thickest area and then you know the silver will travel and it's not going to solidify but we'll come to those type of castings in later films where we have more a two-part mold so let's have a look let's just get a scribe and let's just work on the one half that we have and we're gonna basically make a bit of a pouring channel this is just marking this roughly on here so we got this area that we think can replicate on our other piece as well and from that area this server is going to be coming down in this direction down here so when we come to carve out our pattern whatever pattern you want it has to be in this area down here we're going to work on the same sort of idea the same sort pattern this tends to be a nice little selling point and you can put a nice leather thong through that as well and that looks really really cool haven't like a centerline I just did a rough centerline down there so let's just put a centerline coming down through the middle we're going to measure out not about 15 millimeters out on either side and we're going to put a straight line going across so we've got this arrow shape of run about 30 we're going to come down to this sort of shape and this is completely completely freeform you can do whatever you particularly want to do practice using a nice simple form don't try and have anything that is too thin because don't forget the silver has to travel we've got this idea this little triangle so we can just supposed to do that there and now from that we're going to simply carve out our pattern pen life is all you need to carve this out I'm just going to come in at an angle if you do make a mistake that's tough because you can't replace the cuttlefish at all once you've carved it once you've cut it that's it you cannot do anything else with the piece you would have to stop throw it away and start again try not to breathe in this dust as well although I don't think it's it's it's a dangerous type of dust I wouldn't encourage you to breathe it him you've got an area we've just cut out and you can use any sort of implement to push into this cuttlefish now to make an imprint and don't forget wherever you push into the cuttlefish will come out as a high so in this instance here we pushed in a simple screwdriver a little cross headed quasi drive screwdriver we pushed it in and as a result it's made these lovely little pyramids coming up so you can be as careful as you want and what you will see is when you compress the cuttlefish it'll be quite dense but if you come along with the paintbrush and just wrap up the surface a little bit with a paintbrush you will reveal the lovely cuttlefish texture which is exactly what we are after so if you want that beautiful texture get it pink brush just go over what you've carved out blow it away from you and I'm going to get the end of my needle file I'm just going to put a hole right in the middle and that will appear as a raised section just like that again paintbrush in there paint it all around if you don't throw in your penknife away just refine it it's whatever you want to do very very simple pattern reveal all that cuttlefish pattern okay you may be wondering about how we're going to get the silver we've made up our cavity little simple triangular cavity here is the pouring channel Siletz get our penknife carve that out and what I tend to do is is but similar I'm doing in these techniques this is also the pouring Channel alright same with this one it has to be quite large to get the silver into the mold as fast as possible I use one of the sanding drums to push down in this area and we can utilize that as part of the model itself but also enables the silver to flow down this channel in through this area and straight into the mold make it nice and straight and then put the tops together and because this is only acting as the back we've got a gorgeous texture on this put it together you can see where you're pouring channel is do the same on there try and come down to the same depth as well and do exactly the same scrape that out as well put them all together have a look to see and that is where our silver is going to be entering our mold I want to make it a bit bigger so get your scribe and just mark on either side use the sanding drum I'm not going to put this into my flat shaft and I'm going to come along and just do this be careful because this kicks up quite a bit of dust put those two together and you can see our pour in channel now is nice and the silver is gonna come into this channel straight down and to fill our model try and have it so the silver flows without being interrupted what you don't want to do is if the silver to flow down and stop it has to flow and go into the mold so that little hard it'll stop area there I've just smoothed off we're going to incorporate that into our design and you'll see how all this comes together once we have cast likewise on here super are like them so that's our Lord quickly made up we can put that together like that coming up a bit deeper with that let's have a look yeah super I'll write them so that's what we're going to do we need to bind this together with some binding wire you can use some tape if you want to although the tape may end up burning get your wire wrap it around your cuttlefish a few times to hold the mold together and all this is going to do break that off and then there's two free hands come along with your pliers and twist them nice and tight to hold the mold together now if you're doing this in your home I would suggest you do it right by an open window if this is going to smell we've got molten metal going down into the hole it's gonna burn the cuttlefish but the silver will take the shape of the mold before the burning has really taken place so it's gonna get that gorgeous gorgeous texture before the cuttlefish really does start to burn so you need to put this in a nice area that is a heatproof area perhaps you've got like a bucket or a bowl of sand put this in the sand so it stays upright you want this so if you happen to spill any silver out of this area it'll go in the sand and not all over your lovely work top or your kitchen worktop or heaven forbid a dining room table I know this doesn't look quite straight but I've got the inside looking exactly as I want it I've got a little soldering area that I'm gonna bring onto my bench and we're going to use this this is a nice gorgeous heat proof area where we can do all our melting down and then go into user a third hand to put my mold simply into place like that and that will turn it round this way because when I start to heat up the silver I undo it in this area by here and then I can pour it into here the flame will be coming in this direction so it's going to be avoiding that piece of cuttlefish all right we've got a small little two-inch crucible on a nice crucible handle this is what we're going to use now I know what a lot of you are saying well how much silver do I need to fill up my mold well you have to work out for yourself this is only that I cannot do for you but what I suggest you do is have enough silver to fill up this top area here as well so you're gonna need a lot of silver I have got some old bits of sprue that I have had in the past I'm expecting this is a little much of the area here is gonna film my model so I may need a little bit more than that are actually put those two pieces together there and you can even get away with using one of these torches this is the big brother of one of these if you've got one is these little handheld torches don't bother trying this technique because this torch is never gonna heat up what you've got in there I would suggest you use something like this or even a sievert torch or a Hoch or a gas old plumber's torch seven like that because this is quite a lot of silver we've got in this crucible here you're going to also need a little bit of borax powder as well as you can see flux borax powder you use this to sprinkle upon the silver all right then heat proof area cuttlefish all in position silver in position I've got my safety glasses as well very very important to put on when you're melting down and we're going to start to melt this and the idea is we're going to melt this down when you think it's ready to pour you wait another 30 seconds you put some borax powder onto this pour it into the cuttlefish and it'll all be done without a problem and you virtually get 99% success rate it provided in the model or the molds that you use is quite wide and quite deep in the cuttlefish itself all right then let's get melting down the smaller the torch the longer this process is going to take so this type of torch this is a GT 6000 not quite sure where they make this model I know see but do a large handheld torch like this make sure that the handle is full of gas before you start what you don't want to do to have to start off way through to refill the handles to make sure it's all completely full up before you start alternatively get yourself a nice Siebert torch or a large gas canister torch and it'll really help speed up this process okay we've got about three or four minutes into this you can see how the surface of that silver is really a lovely and clean get a bit of borax on that surface make sure it's lovely and clean swish it around make sure there's no little lumps you can just see coming through the surface when you cannot see anything and it's swishing around the crucible nicely give it another 30 seconds make sure that that silver is lovely a molten on the inside as well completely before we even consider pouring it into our cuttlefish so another 20 to 30 seconds should be fine to get just above melting point then we can put it into our mold keep tapping it make sure all the impurities Kempe the surface we're ready to pour one two three and then it goes you can see straight away a lot of silver you've got that excess this just come around the bottom here as well that's fine that's the whole idea of what we've got this particular heat proof area is for we're gonna allow that now to cool down you can put it into some cold water but that's looking cool I'll write in give it five minutes and we're going to open that up and I'll show you what that looks like so I ended up putting this in the water I really couldn't wait he was taking a long time to cool down obviously because of the huge amount of silver we had in here alright let's open this up and have a look and see what we've got you can see what I mean about the cuttlefish it really does disintegrate we really do have to throw all this away and then what we've got left in here is our washing some water free to have a look at is our model all these little bits around here are the flashings some people suggest that when you make the mold you do a few little channels leading out to let the air out what I find that you don't need it because the cuttlefish is quite a porous type of material so there we go let's just get a bit more water in around those areas and give them a bit of a clean so you can see the areas that we carved this part I pushed that I push the handle of my needle file just that little bit too far into the model I may just have to cut that down a little bit I'm surprised how well that has actually come out so you can see the design you can see the pattern upon the back you can make this is neat or as rough as you want to because we've got this little area by here as I have done with the others here this is the area the pouring channel I've simply drilled a hole across the width of it and from there we can put like a little chain or even what looks better is like a nice black leather thong and I've done the same on that one as well so we need to just trim off the top across here trim off these little excess gaggy bits these little bits upon the bottom and then you can do whatever you want to do you can use something very simple you can use like a brass brush to clean up the silver it's not gonna need a lot of polishing I love this texture and I watch how I want to keep that texture you can polish it with a wire brush like a brass bristle brush as I've shown you on our YouTube child cleaning up silver chains you can use that it'll get a nice bit of a shine ish to it you can use a bra bristle brush sorry to go over it and clean it in all these areas because don't forget you've got all these gorgeous gorgeous little areas that you don't want to get rid of this is fantastic characteristic of cuttlefish I'm gonna go over this with a brass brush villain gonna cut across the top here so that you then is what we've got that it's going to be our Arrowhead clean up all these little areas we're gonna put it in some platinum or some liver of sulfur just to give it that antique look as we've got here and then just wipe it over with a rag just to remove the liver self off the high spots and that's what we're going to be left with so I'm not gonna bore you with the simple way of just using the piercing saw and just trimming off these little areas where the silver has just eased its way through the casting you can simply get the piercing soil and then we're going to go across the end to cut that through I could go with the brass mop a lot of brass brush in a bit of hot soapy water okay bit of shine liver of sulfur and that then is our cuttlefish casting of an arrowhead hope you enjoyed that my name is Andrew Bering don't forget if you've enjoyed this film please give us a like show it with your friends and also if you haven't done already please subscribe and don't forget to click and that little bell I can't so you can be notified when more films go live on our YouTube channel in the meantime my name is Andrew Barry for at the benches YouTube channel thank you for watching I will see you on the next film bye bye [Music] you

Channel: Andrew Berry

Views: 107,190

Keywords: andrew berry, jewelry repairs, making your own jewelry, making jewellery, at the bench, andrew berry jewellery, learning how to, making jewellery for beginners, andrew, berry, jewellery, jewellery repairs, jewellery equipment, how to make jewellery at home step by step, solder, how to make a ring, how to make your own jewellery, cuttlefish casting, cuttlefish bone casting, cuttlefish, cuttle fish, casting using cuttlefish, beginners guide to cuttlefish casting in silver

Id: 7-Fb7TxTDHs

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2017