Learning How To Prepare A Crucible Before Using It For The First Time

hi I'm Andrew berry and welcome to add the benches YouTube channel as you progress through your jewelry making career you will invariably if you better be working in silver or gold have little off cuts of metal bits of silver bits of gold that you either cut off the ends of strips when you make up rings as hidden here we've got some pieces of silver where we've used the disc cutter and what do we do with these little bits and pieces well a lot of you will simply put them in a pot and then send them back to the refiners to get some money back and whilst that's nothing wrong with that that's a great use of the silver as we are creative people let's just utilize these little bits of silver now you don't necessarily need a rolling mill or anything high-tech like that or it's expensive as that but you will need something to be able to melt these down you can pick up crucibles and crucible holders really really cheap and in this film I'm quickly going to show you how to prepare a crucible now if you've got a small little torch like this this is these little creme brulee torches you're never really going to get any success using a crucible and this little torch to heat it up you're going to need something that's a bit larger like this sort of handheld torch if you've got a Seaver to taught or anything like that using map gas or a separate gas canister something like this here quite a big beefy sort of torch absolutely brilliant even if you're using a nice little Smith's little torch that uses oxygen and propane or oxygen and acetylene with the melting tip the process is going to be exactly the same now I've just got a brand new crucible holder you can get a hold like this one or you can get one sort of cord a whip like Oh an iron or steel whip in this instance I've got a small little square crucible you can get these round you can get it in all shapes you can get them larger again the the crucible the more powerful a torch that you need this is a small little I think is about a two inch crucible this is going to be ideal for melting down and run about an ounce and a half of silver we can use these torches that I've shown you apart from my little creme brulee torch to actually melt down using the tools I'm gonna show you now you're gonna need some borax powder now this is essential for preparing your crucible and also I can't do it on the bench that I've got here so you need a larger heat proof surface I've already got one here that I'm gonna bring onto my bench this is a gorgeous little surround I made using some 12 inch 300 millimeter soldiering boards simply cut up to make the size the back and so forth an ideal type of surface to do this work upon we've got our crucible holder brand-new still in this wrapper we go check that away and this is the crucible holder that I have it's got this little section here I'll show you what this is for in a moment but the main part is obviously the handles the file handle and then at this end we've got the area where we can put in our crucible now as I'm right-handed I would have the porn channel coming over to the left if I'm left-handed I would have the little pouring child coming over to the right put it into the crucible holder you got little wing nut here push your thumb up hold the crucible nice and tight doing that and that will hold that nice and steady now this little device here is useful if you've got a larger crucible and the idea is there's a hole in the handle this will locate in the hole and then depending on the size the crucible this will come over to hold it in place because when you tip over the whole crucible there's a chance that if it's a big crucible like a three or four inch crucible the chance the crucible is going to fall out as well this just holds the crucible nice and safe in this little two-inch crucible that I've got I don't necessarily need this so that's what we've got nice simple little setup ideal if you want to use it for delft clay cast in some cuttlefish casting or just simply want to pull it into an ingot mold make sure the crucible is nice and safe inside we're going to get some borax powder now it is important to follow this little step when you come to start to melt down if you don't prepare the crucible there's a chance that when you melt your silver into the crucible itself it will stick and you'll never get it out and you've wasted the silver knew wasted a lot of money so this is what we're going to do it's gonna be quite noisy coming up put the torch on now but I'll explain as I go along if you can hear me over the sound of the torch as I said this of handheld torch is the sort of torch the minimum size that you need obviously the bigger the crucible the more heat it's going to take to heat the crucible up and then the amount of silver so something like this is no good for a larger crucible or even for something even like an ounce obviously about 31 grams of silver or above using the Swiss little torch and the sievert torch absolutely brilliant you can melt at least two bounces okay so we've got the borax powder you can even use your little bit of a borax cone if need be you can smash this if you've got a borax dish like this and as you can see I've been using it and using it the dishes peeve is getting smaller and smaller because all this is borax around the outside and if you wanted you can put this in some nice warm water this separate bit of borax on the outside here will come away you can smash it up with a hammer or rawhide mallet and you can use the powder and the little chips to do this type of process so you don't necessarily need the powder any type of borax even use the cone and when it's the crucible it's hot enough you always put the cone inside the crucible just to coat and to line the inside so the idea is what we're going to do we're going to heat up the crucible so it's nice and red we're going to get the powdered borax we're going to sprinkle it and we're going to sprinkle it into the pouring area here and perhaps there will be some spillage on the outside but that's fine because then we know the silver will not stick to the crucible you want to make sure that the inside the crucible here has a gorgeous glossy finish to it it's gotta be smooth it's going to be full of borax and it will enable the silver to really flow really nicely so let's turn on this torch make sure the torch is fully charged up with gas first of all we're gonna heat up the crucible it's going to take a little while to heat up the crucible because of the the crucible holders well is going to draw some heat away but we need to make sure to be get a nice little butter heat now into this crucible don't put the borax powder on too soon because what you're going to find is that the borax powder is not going to fasten itself to the crucible but the flame is gonna chuck it up into the air and you get end it with a bad case of dandruff and what we are not necessarily dandruff but flux all over your head and flux all over your shoulder so warming up once you can see a little bit of red coming to the surface yeah a little pinch of flux and just gently put it into the crucible like that but the flame onto it and what we want now is for the borax to melt and to glaze and that's what you're essentially doing you're preparing the crucible sues the borax floating around but you're effectively glazing it you're coating that inside with flux you see may be able to see in the camera that the center of the crucible now is covered but not quite the outside so we're going to get a bit more flux put that around the outside making sure it's going to be nicely covered and the inside does have to be completely covered with borax so it's completely glazed nice healthy glow now coming from the crucible bit more flux around the outsides the natto is important to get that flux on that little pouring lip as well but once you've done this one there's no need to do it again once you get a brand new crucible in I would always do this straight away and always keep a crucible separate for the difference precious metals that you use and so I'd have a crucible specifically for silver I will have another crucible specifically for nine karat gold but have another crucible for 18 karat gold and so forth 22 karat gold even if I had yellow gold and white gold I would always use a different crucible for each color and each karat metal as well so that's what the third or fourth lot of borax I put on the crucible that's all we're really going to need [Music] so now we can be sure that we've glazed the inside of that crucible it's going to be all nice and smooth nice and shiny and when we come then to melt our silver or our gold we know that is not going to stick inside the crucible am I going to get a lovely smooth pour as we pull that metal out into the valve clay on the cast in it or the cuttlefish or even into it a nice in got mold to perhaps come along before the rolling mill or even just a hammer flatten to sheet into wire the dissection whatever you want also what you may find because of the heat is quite localized on the crucible you may find the crucible will crack as well it won't necessarily crack in half but cracks may develop and again it is important that when you do come to put the borax that you do fill in those crack to areas so the actual crucible does stay together and this is the reason why we've got this type of crucible holder it holds that crucible together should a crack develop so we've heated up this crucible nicely got a lovely glow about it we've glazed the inside completely covered now a borax that's looking really good that's looking exactly as we want it you can see the shine all around the inside of that crucible even just around the outside edge of the lip as well and that's absolutely spot-on ready to use now when we come to melt our silver or gold remember to have a different crucible for each precious metal and also for each color as well so you don't get any contamination that is how it easy it is to prepare a crucible ready for melting your silver and your gold down thanks for watching mines Andrew berry and don't forget please if you haven't subscribed already I'd love you to click the subscribe button underneath this particular film also don't forget to click on that little bell icon to be notified when we put more films like on our youtube channel in the meantime my name's Andrew berry for at the bench thank you for watching take care I'll see you next time bye bye [Music]

Channel: Andrew Berry

Views: 46,702

Rating: 4.961143 out of 5

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, how to make your own jewellery, soldering, sweat soldering, preparing a crucible with borax, preparing a crucible for casting, preparing a crucible, preparing a crucible for melting down

Id: qxOj7pazB_s

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 03 2018