I recently completed making my first cast medal.
WildIdea
Posts: 1,875 ✭✭✭✭✭
This has been an interesting and fantastic chapter in my coin collecting journey and feel it's finally time to share the experiences and process with you all here. I didn't want to start the thread and jinx the process until I had completed the piece in hand and now that I do, I wanted to get it all out here. I find it hard to post often here as most days I only get 5-10 min to read posts and on a good day maybe 30 minutes and the brain power needed to respond to threads is usually all used up by the end of the day when I can log on, but I love it here and consider all of you my friends. I wanted to get this all out as thoroughly as possible and plan on getting into all the details. Questions and feedback are welcome.
A little history and build up for this piece would likely start off at the very beginning of my coin collecting. I suppose I always collected and valued old coins but let's say my serious look and walk down the long hallway of the hobby started in I would say 1997. Picture a hallway with hundreds, maybe thousands of doors and on them each with a simple sign. Silver Dollars, Bust Halves, Conder Tokens, Exo, Grading, Auctions, So-Called Dollars, Mexican Reals, Show circuit, Words that work, Brick and mortars, Counterfeits, you get the point. Over the years I wandered this hallway peeking in a few doors and closing quick, some doors opened up into huge inviting rooms where I stayed quite a while, like Lincoln Cents, and if you stay in theses comfortable places long enough, they get boring and while poking around you find there is a trap door that connects to another room, the back side of say, Civil War Tokens, that skips the hallway altogether. This is how I view the hobby and it is a wonderment of discovery and knowledge. I try to look in as many doors as possible and thoroughly explore and over the years I got a pretty good handle on how the whole place worked and connected. Sometimes a new door shows up with a bright new shiny sign CAC, or maybe one I missed before like Slab generations 101. I was always either preoccupied or intimidated with the subject of foreign coins, especially the ones that showcased medals. Frankly, I didn't know what a medal even was or meant compared to circulating coinage other than they are both typically round.
I hear it here often, folks get into the doldrums of collecting, surly there is another door to explore, and that worked along time, but it was happening to me. I had decided to just accept the fact and rolled on a few years just trying to be content buying a piece here and there as something interesting floated by. Picture me sitting in front of a computer with teepee hands to my face going from one search to another and not finding anything to buy that was interesting for the price. This is what my 20+ years collecting has brought me to? Saddened, I responded to a thread in January on the foreign coins forum about goals for 2019 and I put out there that I was going try harder than ever to reach out and find neat coins in ways I never have tried. Like send letters to dealers, follow up on leads and even try to learn how to deal with foreign dealers in Europe as well as foreign auction companies. Just get after it and scour like never before.
A fellow member, @cacheman reached out on the thread in PM and I dedicate this thread to him. You see, it was my conversations with him that the first spark showed up to make my first medal.
One year at FUN I had bought a Walther Eberbach WWI satiricle cast iron medal from a dealer for around $350.00, mostly because it was large, spooky and had a full skeleton dropping bombs on it. Edgy piece for sure and full of history. I was wanting to find others of the series and had been coming up dry. Cacheman was talking about the period and if I was into Karl Goetz. I said I was and has some of his struck coinage but was vague about his works and although attracted to his medals, I didn't want to start buying anything until I knew more. That the books I saw on his works were $1000.00 for the pair and that stalled me. He said he has the copy rites and can get me paperback volumes for $135.00, which I immediately bought. There are over 800 Goetz works and although I don't want to go on and on about him here, there is a chapter on how his cast medals were made in the books. Cast iron? At first, in my collecting, I was all about the gold. Gold seemed really serious, and it is, but I was soon paying more than gold prices for silver coins of quality. Then I started spending 3-4Xs that on copper coins! Now I'm buying cast iron. Totally regressing in nobleness of metal, what's next, wood or plastic? We'll see, but I'm looking at bronze and iron in a whole new light at this point. It's super fragile and a 100 year old pristine example is a wonder.
This is the kind of history I'm after with my coins. A take on American involvement by Germany. Interesting.
The other thing that caught my interest about medals is that compared to struck circulating coinage, although mint made by people, we will never really know who made them as opposed to a cast piece buy Goetz, Gies, Eberbach and their contemporaries, they were actually made by those artists. When your handling a piece like this your likely holding in your hands a piece crafted by the artist them self. This is a really heady thing to me and when I get a piece like this in the mail and hold it for the first time it's like shaking the hand of that person. Wild.
Another switch goes off for the time period a lot of these German pieces were made. There seems to be a flourishing of medallic art coming from Germany around the WWI period and many depict events surrounding the war. I would like to add here that I was lucky to have known all 4 of my WWII veteran Grandfathers. My two Bio Grandfathers both served in Middle East and Asia eventually passed and both my Grandmothers remarried veterans. Grandpa Nick was on the USS Vestal when it was hit in Pearl Harbor and Grandpa Tom in pacific Navy. Also, my grandmother made Douglas Dauntless fighters in Seattle during war and my Great Uncle a 4 year prisoner of war in Poland and survived a death march across Europe. I worshiped these people and grilled and spoke with them about their experiences whenever I could, although I could tell they valued the relative peacetime I was growing up in. I studied WWII most of my life. What I learned doing that was that many of the answers to questions about WWII are hidden in the wars before it. That lead me to a 15 year immersion into WWI starting with books about all the big battles but eventually to the political situations and circumstances creating grievances strong enough to kill people over. I know I will need to look at the wars leading up to the Great War to understand it better and could likely follow it back to the worlds original grievances.....nevertheless, to me, the more interesting and well crafted medals created around WWI tend to be German and depict specific topics around the conflict. Still, the volume, variety and magnitude of the pieces is huge and my limited exposure and scope isn't any indicator of whats really out there and possible. Right now there are over 60K medals on eBay and another 60K offered for sale overseas that I know about as I type. I'll likely be seeing new pieces forever and really enjoy decoding the deeper hidden meanings.
But I don't just want to be a computer jockey collector, remember? If all these medals weren't amazing enough, most of them were made at home or small makeshift studios! No huge presses and costly equipment requiring heavy financial backing. These were made by artisans that were moved enough by the politics of the day to craft these medals themselves. Although likely for financial gain at some level, in my mind these pieces were created out of a burning desire to say and share something important and have it last forever in metal. These men didn't wait around for someone else to make these for them, they rolled up their sleeves and crafted them themselves. I totally respect this and this is where the whole idea started to make my own medal. I collect coins, medals immortalize something important, I'm bored with collecting, I am an artist, I have a pathway to create if a cast piece and there is a vibrant modern medal making community. Bingo!
Sidebar here. I really respect Dan Carr and everything he does. I will never buy an obsolete government press, restore it, write code so my computer will talk to it, build a laboratory and wire it up to power all the machines and build a company around it. Isn't that amazing? It's way over my head. I admire the moxie required to work that out so he can make coins he otherwise would never see. That is the pinnacle to me, the guy is a genius. I think it's that example though that has me thinking I can employ my skill set to create something I'm tired of waiting for and that is where the cast piece come into play.
What will my medal be about? Clearly a medal or coin has images of meaning. There is nothing on a medal that doesn't belong there. I also think it should be concise and to the point and somewhat attractive in layout. Easy for the eye to track around and provoke the viewers imagination to new ideas. I'm not going political, I'm not moved enough by that and todays news moves faster than medal making could keep up anyway. My first piece will be about my beloved Tattooing career and my shops/businesses that I still thrive in today. I was leery about sharing what I do all along but feel it's ok as they're public anyway and many of you here share what your profession is outside of coin dealer. This thread is about my medal and not a commercial about my business. I'm not trying to drum up business. It's more about channeling the passion I have for the field into the sails that will push this piece over the finish line. All my art projects are done in the order of inspiration rather than importance or income potential. Here's another thing. I love skulls, they are neat and I can't get tired of drawing them and tattooing them on people is always a hit, to me they mean we're only here a little while so use your time wisely. Skulls are hard enough to find on an old coin right, and the world is woefully short of them and when they come around justacommeman will snatch them up, lol!? I'll tell you right now that a tattoo machine on an old coin or medal doesn't exist and if one does, you could name your price to me. This may be the worlds first tattoo machine piece for all I know.
I started tattooing in 1997 at age 25 and was blessed with a wonderful 4 year apprenticeship at a busy shop in my hometown. The owners really gave me all they could and exposed me to a lot and I was one of 4 guys at the time we just had a blast. They were around 25 years older than me and had a lot to teach, plus I worshiped them. They taught me the technical and the business end, everything. We tattooed everyone in town and on several occasions bike rallies around the surrounding states and the big one Sturgis every year. Many people in the public and within the field gave me the benefit of the doubt because of my association with these people. They really opened a lot off doors for me I eventually opened my own studio in 2001 and since built it from a one man show to two studios averaging 12 employees. Tattoo isn't just my job, it's my everything. I can't imagine tattoo treating anyone any better than it has me and I owe the craft so much. I have 5 people who have been with us over 10 years and now have a 6th this year. I want this piece to be a gift of sorts that I can give crew members at these big milestones. I have one guy moving, he'll get one....they all will in the end and maybe some of my business acquaintances and clients who complete a major multi session project. People think my coin hobby is dorky or don't get it, but I'm sure they would think this will be a special gift and cooler than a cheap trophy shop challenge coin. A medal hand crafted by the person who directly leads them in their tattoo journey will defiantly have power attached to it.
Wow, that's a lot of writing for a forum post. If you got this far, thanks for reading. Here it goes. I'll end the first post with my first thumbnail sketch of the medal. This would have been around the first week of January 2019. It will have our shop emblem and studio name on one side and on the reverse a tattoo machine and scrolls with a few key words. Hmmm, what will those be? I'm thinking of my tattoo craft and business in a whole new way and that's refreshing!
Comments
Interesting post! I've also been intrigued with Goetz for some time now.
I knew it would happen.
What a post!
My current "Box of 20"
Thank you @WildIdea your post is fantastic!
That's a great pursuit and story. Medallic artwork can be fascinating.
Just don’t regress to bitcoins.
Thanks folks, That's the motivator, now its time to get into the process. This is all taking place in Rapid City, South Dakota in the beautiful Black Hills.
First off, I had in my head to make a wax model and ultimately pressure sand casting the impression. I ordered some sculpting wax on eBay and had that on hand at this point. I was researching the process and it looks pretty straight forward but I had a lot of hours ahead of me in the wax to decide how to cast right then.
A huge turning point to the story happened early on with the introduction of a teacher. A master jeweler named Doug Napier that I had finally crossed paths with. There was a local art supply shop called Creative Art and Frame I had been going to for air brush and paint supply from the time I was 14 and one of my favorite places ever. The owner Ken was stricken with ALS and passed a few years ago and the place slowly disassembled. It was so sad. I saw Ken at the store a few months before he passed and had a chance to thank him for the roll his store had in my life up to this point. Word on the street was that it sold to a guy who was gonna make it a jewelry supply. There is a rich history of jewelry making with the Black Hills gold jewelry and there is a lot of jewelry making knowledge in the area. This man Doug converted the art store more into a jewelry supply, jewelry studio and classroom. There are classes you can take to make certain projects and my wife and daughter even took one and came home saying you'd love this guy. I went down one day and we made friends in 5 minutes. I said I was interested in jewelry making as I do that already and would love to improve, but what I'm really interested in is casting a medal.
I think he was kinda taken aback. I was talking about Goetz and cast medals and trying to express all that and define what I was going for and it's just a lot to take in at once. He thought what I needed to do was cast the pieces in plaster investment and skip the sand casting for now as they would make better detail. I said I like detail but want to work in the footsteps of these old masters. We went back and fourth some on that but he agreed to take me on as a student for private lessons for two hours every Monday. I'm a huge believer in the thought that it takes 10,000 hours to master something, and at my age, I don't have 10,000 hours to master all the things I want to still, so when I can I hire a teacher to knock 3-4000 hours off the top and get me heading in the right direction sparring me the early painful learning curve. Worth the money to me. This was about $80.00 a week to go nerd out on art once a week. Right up there with a guitar lesson or something and a pittance to what I can drop collecting coins. Now I teach and develop tattoo artists how to hone their craft and I'm determined to be a good student here. I know what that looks like.
Our first lesson I brought to the studio a bunch of other medals in my collection to give him an Idea of what my target was. Cast, struck, guided, just a good overall idea. He wanted to start me off with teaching me how wax worked. I had bought the purple carving wax and which he didn't like, my first mistake! He thought it too soft and doesn't hold the detail hard green wax does. I made the choice thinking softer would be easier to carve. This is already the paying off being here. My medal making Mr. Miyagi. There is wax blade for the hand saw and I just get the hang of motoring through some wax with that and then he starts showing me power tools and all the wax bits. I sit there and mangle some wax while he's over on his bench working some project of his own. There is a bunch of hand tools that resemble dental pics. Many are basically nut pics that have been heated and filed into custom scribes for wax sculpting. This is where I'm first impressed that a lot of the tools have to be crafted first. Metal files and sandpaper are introduced. Who would have thought. And lighter fluid will melt the wax. He explained that the piece can be crafted from several different models and welded together. I assure him I think I can motor my piece from the top surface down in one shot. He's dubious about that I can tell. Thats how I remember our first interaction and at this point I'm encouraged and feel this thing will happen. My goal is to have a medal in hand by the end of the year.
Pretty rough huh, I'll show you the ugly. This is my first try and I'm just getting started. It's a good thing wax is cheap. Wax acts a certain way and I need to get the feel of it, but I like how it feels and it's satisfying carving it. I'm wearing a sterio magnifier WITH readers and it really puts you in there and can see the tool really working. I have instructions now for the week and I think I'll start over on a new piece at my home studio. I'm pretty excited about it.
Wow and double wow.... Something I would never imagine reading on a coin forum....@WildIdea...Thanks for your interesting story and now very interesting goals and progress. I look forward to seeing you work through this and the eventual goal. Cheers, RickO
Well its raining and the lawn can wait a bit so I'll post some more. You know, most of this medal was made in the dead of winter and bad weather. Pretty good pastime.
My last name is Thrash so early on, when it was just me one humble ink man alone, I called the shop Thrash's Living Art Studio out of tradition and my first landlord was weary of me using the word Tattoo in a sign on his place. This was still a time when tattoo shops weren't really welcome to be in certain areas of business. Places would say "sure I'll rent to you, but first I'll ask the neighbors" then "oh yeah, they all said no". Eventually, I found a big time property manager with some muscle and he took a chance on me. Still, he thought it was gonna cost him. After my first two years there I ended up buying a building up the street on the main drag and changing the name to Thrash's Tattoo and we rolled loud and proud. He said that in the two years I was there I was the only one on the whole strip that paid their rent one time, cool I said, I'll take my deposit back then.
The shop emblem was created one late night in probably 2003 for a t-shirt design. I came up with a skull and one bone balanced by barb wire, a popular image in tattoos. It became our emblem soon after that. It's also a coveted tattoo that only gets dished out to certain people under positive circumstances. Inner circle people and clients that obviously deserve it. They are never alike and never drawn the same, only the element of skull and one bone we call the Thrash's skull. I couldn't tell you how many are out there but its a lot.
I had taken some time to prep my work station at the house. I have a killer art studio in the basement. Picture an 8 foot desk with slight incline and killer lighting splitting the room and a full length credenza behind me with microscope, Genie rock polisher, and various presses mounted to it. Across the room, in an entirely different vented work station for soldering and crafting silver jewelry and fine electrical repairs. The rest is totally encrusted in reference and reading material and looks like a real wizards hideout. Love that place. I put on some tunes then I sweep out a spot for wax carving and get a new disk cut out and sanded. Takes about an hour or so for that. It's ⅜ inch thick and I plan to make this piece pretty meaty and thick with as high a relief as I can get on it and I want the bone to hang off the edges a little bit breaking up the circle. I have some dental tools of my own and I use my practice piece to test out what works the best. After some measurements and a few scribed lines I get after taking out material on the piece. I start with the skull focal point. I figure that if that doesn't look good I'll start over before I invest too much time in the supporting acts of the piece. At this point I don't have a lot of carving confidence but make pretty decent progress and that's pleasing. This session was probably 4-5 hours give or take.
Right here I have the top of the skull kind of laid out and I need to start considering the how the other elements will come into play. There will be lettering around the skull and I do what I call Stadium Seating here. I want the tops of the letters high at the rim and dip down towards the skull. I think this will be a cool effect and also help the skull really set out there and hopeful pop as much as possible. At this point I'm not sure if I'll get to that even, but I feel it prudent to have some of that in my sights early on.
Very cool! Soon, you will be taking orders for medals! I think the war medals are awesome too!
Your career has afforded you an incredible gift. You spend hours creating your art while interacting with individuals who have made a personal lifetime commitment to display your creation. How fortunate to have a profession that communicates with others only when you are both committed to a mutually beneficial result. The influence of your experiences surfaces in the smooth flow of your thoughts and writing style. Self-expression, in any form, is the paradigm that is exclusive to the human intellect. You are merging your unique two-dimensional discipline to construct a three-dimensional tangible entity. If you do not mind me asking, does the medium of this new “door” also require a new perspective?
@Intueor You are the real poet here with your response. That floored me. You already picked up on how I feel and "get it". It is a total blessing and gift to be involved with this craft. It's about people, deep meaningful interactions, art, and energy that compounds on itself. I've never taken anything as serious as tattooing and the relationships it has spawned as well as the countless opportunities that have spun out of it.
Typically you see tattoo artists involved with other graphic mediums that hone their skills. Many chose to paint classically but with a tattoo influenced theme. Sure, I've done quite a bit of that in my day. Paintings make my Dad rather happy. It's not that he thinks I'm wasting my time tattooing, he says it's just that that work goes bye bye and gone forever, that maybe I should focus more on something that will last longer and be treasure for the family. At first, I took it wrong and my wife says it's a Dads job to stand on your neck. I replied to him once I never felt the same connection sitting in front of a canvas I get from working on peoples skin and maybe I am seduced by the quick buck that comes along with tattooing as well. Either way, he's overjoyed I'm sculpting miniature disks of metal. And he's right, these will last forever. Definitely have the potential to last longer than a tattoo. He says, stack them up! As far as the transition of thinking, it's strictly all about what I want to do and the creative process doesn't have to be OK'd at all by the client. Certain scribes I have are basically like shading and keep up with the creative speed of things and if I take out too much wax, I can put some back. That is liberating! You only get one chance with a tattoo to pack the skin with color and need to know when to stop. If you keep working skin you'll bore a hole in it, ouch! Then it scabs hard and people won't come back to you. There is a lot less pressure for sure.
Just don’t regress to bitcoins.
As far as “get it”, your sentiments about your craft are clearly mirrored in your posts. One cannot miss it.
) is a true privilege. Looking forward to more….
To some extent, I agree with your Dad. Medals, like coins, last “forever” and are an intrinsic medium for lasting personal expression. However, to have the honor to adorn another person with your art (and get paid for it
Thanks @Intueor I appreciate you comments and input. I can post a little more for the end of the night. The next session was going to be strictly about he skull and see if I could get something good looking for that element. I had the better part of a day to dig nd scrape on the piece.
I have pretty accurate reference material in the studio and have that to look at while I go for it. I picture the nose bone to be the highest part of the image and drop the rest down from there. I suppose I could add some material and make it taller even but I don't want anything to be higher than the rim of the piece, if that even becomes an issue going forward, I'll find out as I go, I'm still really new at this. I work off to my right side of the face as that seems the most natural with me being right handed. Things are going pretty well for now. I think that one half of the skull ate up a session for the day and had to move onto other things at that point.
Valuable creative production time in the studio is always tough to get, but naturally, I make time for things I enjoy and set down for another 3-4 hour session the following afternoon. This carving is getting more relaxed and free flowing. I'm really enjoying checking out on it for a few hours. I recognize that my thoughts kind of flow across my brain as I work, processing and considering answers to problems I didn't even know I was considering. A meditation for sure. The entire skull came into focus and I quit for the day pleased with how it looks. Although, even after I get the kids homework done and them put to bed and ready to sleep myself, I go downstairs to just turn off the lights and decide to hit that one spot just a little and two more hours fly by forming one of the bone ends.
Great work mate...........
Fascinating!
Very talented. Good luck!
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
Thank you everyone. I'm happy to keep sharing.
I've learned over the years that there is a freshness to an art session and it will sort of drop off in intensity or change as you tire. I explain it by saying, picture a sheet of lined writing paper, now draw capitol O,s that touch each other OOOOOOO. Now how many lines on that sheet can you go before they start to look different. When they start to look weird and not match, it's' time to go ahead and stop for a while. On top of that, if it is a project that will require multiple sessions, it's a good idea to spread out that energy across the piece or it can show. Um, lets say if you start one area of a painting and work left to right and several months go by, it's likley the other side will look like a different painting because the creative energy will have changed in that amount of time. It could even change faster, it all depends on the person and project. So it's a thing I do to only put fresh creative energy into a piece (basically 4 hours at a shot per day) and to also move around the project for continuity of design. I don't want each side of this medal to look like totally different people crafted it.
Doug's studio, The Jewelry Monk is an awesome place. There are tools here I've never seen or know how to use all clean and orderly. A playground for artists. I really enjoy coming here and he gives me his undivided attention. Other students come and go and I've become the "medal guy" and they have their own projects going that are totally different.
With the skull sort of locked in I think its time to get some of the reverse sketched on and laid out. Doug thinks I could make two different pieces if I wanted to and build a mold together from there. I feel the master should be how the finished medal will look and feel. Either way he says. He just wants to teach me how the process works so I can keep making medals myself after this one is done.
I can't have one side get all scratched up when I'm working on the other so I implement a nice soft towel to protect the opposite carving. Seems to work and it catches the wax dust nicely.
I get to his shop once a week and work on the model there and he gives me pointers and correction. My daughter says her art teacher at school repeatedly comments, "nice, but needs more work." I say that's what all the art teachers say! Doug is no different. He's leaning in me to keep working the details and smoothing the texture. To make a new tool and file it then sand the edge with emery cloth. That every little scratch and texture will show up in the finish piece. I have to leave my ego at the door.
When I'm back at my house with the piece I feel the best. I can slip into the wax and never come out! 4 hours goes by fast on wax. The reverse will showcase the tattoo machine surrounded by a ribbon that will hold some lettering. I choose to go with an early design of the classic electro magnetic type for the medal. It is the more recognized type of machine, the one that makes the classic buzzing sound. I also have to decide what words will be on the reverse and after I find a balance for placement I have room for three words. It's a struggle and I go back and fourth and hit my thesaurus and eventually come up with MASTERY would be the pursuit of technical application and cleanliness of form and ascetic on the human body. The art of consultation too dragging a squirming recipient over the pain threshold fishline before they embarrassingly tap out. I turn to HERITAGE as there is an ancient lineage of verbal teaching of the craft going back thousands of years. From one hand to another as one ages out to teaching another. A proper respect goes along with the elders and a desire to take it forward. Finally, EXCELLENCE, excellence in craft, demeanor, reputation, cleanliness, relations with public and coworkers, Basically everything you touch as a tattoo artist and how the field is received and represented. To up level everything. Its healthy to think of these things and solidify what it is I'm trying to convey in my medal.
This side took the better part of three weeks to get to this point and still needs quite a bit of finishing work I feel that at this point Doug realizes I'm series about the project. He has a tool called a waxer at his place that is a heated metal pen of sorts that will strategically melt areas on your project. It has a rheostat that sets the heat levels that the purpose is to melt wax and build up areas or that you want remove or change so you don't have to one shot your piece. I don't have a waxer and ask him what they did 400 years ago. He said there is an alcohol burner that they would hold a metal pin in and work with that before it cooled. I tried a candle but the soot from the flame fouls your pen and gets in the wax making it impossible to work with properly. I get a burner at his place for a few bucks and work that way for weeks before my very own brand new mail ordered waxer tool came in.
Quite awesome!
Liked your description of the pitfalls and rewards of your individual creative process. Your shot of Doug's studio is a tinkerer’s dream. The right tools always spark inspiration. What is most impressive, thus far, is the evolution of the wax. Each successive image shows the delicate progressive interaction of concept, tools, skill, creativity, and application. The choice of the three words in the ribbon legend reveals dignity and depth. The articulation of focused thought is the purest form of genius. Thanks for the images and insight.
I still need to go back and read the book at the top of the page
but it appears you are prepping for a single casting by the lost wax process. Have you given any thought to instead using the carving to make a mold that itself can be used to make wax casts (for use in lost wax casting) so that you can make multiples?
BTW - I tried to make a ring once out of that wax so it could be cast in silver. I didn't get very far - it is not easy to work with. But, you seem to have mastered it pretty well.
Neat! Looks like you picked a door that few have gone in- thanks for sharing.
POTY in my book.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Doug has been building the tool collection his whole professional life to someday implement his dream of a jewelry making classroom. He said some of the more expensive pieces came from closeout auctions where nobody bid but him. I guess it pays to bide your time on some of that stuff. He's very generous with the access to some of it and that will become evident as the story progresses.
I guess my low post count was all built up and came out yesterday all at once!
Yes, the plan is to make a mold or casting of the original so I can make innumerable recastings. Making a metal casting from the original scares me as it will be lost, but will have the best detail. If it has to, I will put the original up in smoke to the casting gods. Up to this point, there are several ways to proceed with a casting and the ultimate decision doesn't have to be made just yet.
It's never too late to pick up an old project. Doug's motto for the studio is "make the best jewelry of your life" It can't be the only place out there like it. Surly your ring would be unique and special to you if you completed it.
Having invested a load of time in the reverse, it was back to the front. I had carved my initials below the jawbone with a dot between as a nod to the old masters. It was one of the ways I have seen this done and I like it. I also had tried to integrate the edge of the piece with artwork but decided it was rather busy and distracting, so I eliminated much of the design and kept the simple machine clip cord that wraps around the edge and integrates both sides of the piece a little bit.
At this point I have quite a bit of time invested in the piece and was looking ahead to the main lettering around the skull. I was really nervous about wrecking the piece at this point and that feeling actual gets more intense the more complete the model becomes.
I had asked a coworker who is a great on computer art programs to help me get a layout that will help me type set the shop name. Doug has suggested a method of laying in a printed paper design on an area and poking around the edges of the design with a needle to create an accurate pattern in the wax. I liked the idea. In tattoo it's one of the first rules you learn to do your lettering first, THEN draw your banner around it instead of the other way around or you get pinched. Now I'm digging into a space that is pretty defined and I need all the type setting help I can get.
I aslo don't know how high to make the lettering relief, because I'm not versed on how this will all translate as a cast piece and how the toning will eventually offset the letters. I just have to go with my gut for what seems reasonable. Even consulting some of my medal collection for what others have done.
I get the field a little more smooth and a bit steeper and go ahead and try the needle technique. It is a huge help. By now I have a favorite tool, It's a little flat blade and makes quick work of the first word. Motivated to have this step behind me I just whittle away the second. I'm pretty stoked with how it looks. I'm going for a bold, strong look with my shop name letters.
Around this time I get my own waxer at the house. Doug has shown me how to add a finer tip by smoldering a piece of silver to the end of it. I took my sheers and cut off a thin sliver, then curled the end just a little and solder it to the tip of the fine heat tip element. The little curl helps hold a small bead of wax, like water tension and makes for strategic reworking of tight areas. Things like the teeth and or blemishes around the letters. You take a scrap of wax, grab a little with the waxer and drop it on your piece to re carve. One could literally work a piece forever now with this critical tool.
The following days I find some time to add the town and eventually the state, which I opt for the abbreviation for instead of trying to cram South Dakota in that tight spot. I go with a western font for those. I also shorten the length of the bone as well. I would have thought I knew what a tattoo machine frame looked like, but I had the binding post support arm on the wrong side. I guess it's not the wrong side, but it's not the common way they come. I use my waxer to correct my mistake and I think it adds a better look as it helps the flow of the piece. I'm kind of speeding though the wax steps now. There are hours of smoothing and refining. I really lost count of how many hours I put into the piece. Well over a few hundred. I will say I kind of tuned into a neat feeling with this project in my life. I went about my day to day with the wax model in my backpack in case I had a minute to work on it. It was like my secret pet art project, just a cool place I could turn and will def continue to have that going forward from here.
Finally, I add the Grateful Dead 13 point lightning bolt to the machine tube grip. I have to pay homage to the first place I ever saw and believed that if I followed my true feelings, I could make a vibrant living as an artist. To not follow that status quo and do what felt the most natural. As a young man I often heard "it's neat you can draw, but what are you going to do for a job?" The first place I became aware I could possibly do this was around others doing the same at Dead shows in the late 80's and early 90s. Also, that the whole electric tattoo machine thing and how once your exposed to that it can change you forever.
Nice.
I suggest a uniface casting also, to be made into belt buckles.
The gods always demand blood sacrifice, at least once, when mortals endeavor to transcend eternity. If you do not mind me asking, when did you bleed?
This is truly the most interesting post I think I've ever read here! Your narrative is captivating and allows us to follow along and see how much time, inspiration, and talent a work of art such as this requires.
Thanks folks, I appreciate the responses!
That wraps up the the wax carving part of the process. Doug wanted to see me take it further and continue to refine the texture and I was saying I wanted to be done now on this piece and take it on to the next steps so I could ultimately see how much detail is lost in the casting process. I'm attracted to the refined quality of medals from the late 1800's to say 1950 and was shooting for that all along but I still like some of the tool marks showing as that adds some level of character and charm, so somewhere in the middle was going to be good with me.
In the beginning, I had thought we were going to place the original wax in plaster investment and melt it out in a kiln. Once a metal reproduction was made, we could then make a rubber mold from it that new wax models could be repeatedly made and cast.
Doug agreed that was how it's usually done but now thought that unwise. He cautioned that after all the time I put into my hand carved master we should start off with a cold "safety" mold first and work from that. I questioned why and he said in the off chance the first mold failed, I would lose my work and be starting over. That it's rare, but he's seen plaster molds crack in half in the kiln, etc. I'm starting to get excited about having this in metal form but agree we just couldn't live with ourselves if that happened so we to go this way first. We can always sacrifice the master model whenever we want.
I'm instructed to add a channel of wax to the pice in a place I can remove it easily after the piece is finally cast in metal. I go with a wide spot on the rim. The channel allows wax and metal in future steps to flow into the piece. The waxer again makes this short work but I have to make sure I don't touch my master with the heat or I'll have to stop and repair the damage. Then the model and wax channel are mounted again to the inside of an aluminum flask to a built in nipple that eventually this rubber mold material will dock onto a wax filler device. Also, I'm coached to make this a smooth transition as we don't want anything to create turbulence when wax and metal are flowing into the molds.
With small sheets of plex on the sides, were all set to get the rubber mold material mixed up and poured into the flask. Doug takes over here and weighs the proper ingredients in grams and then has me stir the pot of several min with a thin metal rod. We walk it over to a vacuums chamber and it starts pulling out all the air. A tremendous amount of air bubbles start to rise out of the liquid. It threatens to flow over the container sides, but Doug is there on a lever adjusting the pressure and ultimately it collapses completly and is ready to pour. I asked him what would it be like if we skipped the step and he said the rubber would look like bread inside with all the bubbles. We laughed that if you actually put bread dough in the vacuum it would probably make a brick of bread tight as a hockey puck.
We get the fluid over to the mold and pout it in. You want to pour it in the side and let it come up around the model evenly and not pour directly over the model or the cascading fluid may make air bubble around the piece. Then we place the flask in the vacuum again and incredibly, even more air bubbles rise out of the fluid.
There it will set for at least a day, but I won't be back to Doug's place till the following Monday as this pleasurable side project has to wait it's turn behind all the other important life happenings.
I agree 1000% with him and am glad he spoke up.
I believe that when artists make a bronze sculpture they start off in clay and from that model a mold is made that is used to make wax casts that are then used to make a single use plaster/ceramic mold. In that process, the clay original is preserved. In your case, all that work was put into a wax original that would have been lost with the first cast so there would have been no room for error.
I love these two sentences. I contemplated them all night. A riddle of sorts but left me thinking about it deeply. Surly I have paid my dues by now.
Yes @JBK! Pretty neat your 5000th post was on this thread! I appreciate your input and comments, Thanks! I'll be posting more tonight as time permits.
First, the “mechanics” of the processes you must master are fascinating. Like Tattooing, they are as old as dirt and passed down from antiquity. The personal documenting of the scope of this project is admirable.
Second, no riddle intended. Maybe you have noticed that in every project that tests knowledge, skills, and ingenuity there comes a moment when you cut, puncture, or nick yourself enough to draw blood. Most times the level of concentration is so intense, you do not even notice until you find a drop or fingerprint on your creation. You dress the wound for hygienics and to stop bleeding on your work, pass it off with a curse, and continue working. You are entering new territory and muscle memory is yet to form or you have made one too many “O’s”. Well, maybe. However, there are those who believe that this sacrifice is demanded by the muses when you transgress to a higher level. Your unique DNA must forever be integrated into your work. Next time it happens, you might catch a shadow out of the corner of your eye or swear you heard a muted snicker. The “Bard” put it best, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet). I was just curious when the gods extracted their vig. It may come later in your narrative. There is no intent to disrupt the flow, please continue….
I gotcha @Intueor. I was thinking you meant more philosophical than literal, but yes there is always blood or sacrifices of some sort. Blood came from doing metal rust repair on a classic car last winter. I consider auto restoration an art project. Even went to the Emergy clinic with a bad cut once on that one. And burns! Welding burns. Those are the worst. I’ve heard someone say on my car forum “if you haven’t Bleed on it you haven’t worked on it.” Lots of bandaids needed to resurrect and old vehicle from oblivion. If I could have dripped blood somewhere to have that fix itself I would have.
With this medal the only suffering so far is the test of patience. I desire the piece in hand and the notion of Pride I’ll feel when I give it to someone and finally catalog and integrate my prototypes and finished pieces to my personal collection. Like you said, still early in the game for me so I must be careful.
I think it’s a good time to admit that now that I’m not concentrating on hunting for coins for my collection, I keep seeing killers for sale! Apparently, now that I’m hung up on this medal things I only dreamed I could buy were being offered suddenly for sale. I pick up a few more interesting items along the way. Pretty neat how that works. Like fishing, you only get a bite when you turn your back in your rod.
Back at Doug’s, it’s time to harvest the model from the rubber mold. Doug takes over here and he clips the rubber to a clamp attached to a chain mounted to his desk. Then, with an interesting shaped razor blade he starts spitting the rubber in half. He employs a certain twist that creates a stacking of shapes. In the corners he carves big bumps that are basically keys that will help with mold alignment. Then the original is freed to be safely stored until further use.
We can’t wait to see how the mold will don so we give it a try right away. On the bench is a molten liquid wax kettle that will pump wax into the mold. It has a pressure nipple where wax escapes and adjustable air intake.
The first try was not very good at all but sort of interesting and a neat beginning to the progression. We adjust the air pressure and get a better piece the second try. You have to squeeze the mold together while pressing the nipple in and hold it there long enough for wax to splash in and fill the cavity. We keep getting better waxes each time but Doug thinks some of the wax is cooling before the entire mold is filled, making watery, irregular effects. He adds more cut lines to the mold for air to escape and that helps some. More attempts are made but were thinking the wax type needs to be changed. This light blue viscosity is more for small jewelry pieces and there is a red that is more for bulky pieces like big belt buckles. Doug suggests he gets that swapped out and next time we can work with that and see just how full and clean we can get the waxes.
He reminds me that these models will also be needing clean up and imperfections corrected, but we don’t want to be correcting a ton of stuff so it’s better to focus on achieving high quality waxes as possible. There is a learning curve for every step along the way. Pressure, temps, wax type and mold temperatures and amount of mold release are all to be fine tuned. I’m really looking at my collection with new eyes and appreciating the craftsmanship more as I go here. The old timers had this all figured out long ago and I’m having a blast trying to learn the process. Sort of a lost art, I just don’t think it has to be.
None of these models are usable, but I’m excited with the progress. I don’t think we lost much detail at all and we will cast something of these and decide from there how they look and how to proceed.
If your mold material can handle it, bring the mold temperature up to the melt temp of the wax before injection. Wear gloves and keep from changing your grip pressure till it solidifies.
I'll keep posting the progress as I can. I have saved this story up so I could share it rather quickly or one could be waiting weeks between updates if posted in real time. I still want to be a thorough as possible and include as many details as I can.
We try a red wax and then a deep blue type for different cooling rates. We get some decent red ones but most of the best ones come from the dark blue wax. We find a good air pressure to set the kettle at well as get the hang of how many seconds to fill the mold for. The wax really blows up the mold and runs out on your hands. I get the fear sensation that it will burn me, but if you hang in there you get the best molds as it isn't really that hot actually. It's all feel really. Then you have to resist the urge to open the mold right away and let it fully cool before you open it. We also learn that the mold acts different the more you use it as it gets hotter and makes all kinds of weird effects, some rather interesting. A couple failed ones are actually kind cool, hmmmm. Eventually we get several pieces with potential and I get them back to my house for final detail in the undistracted privacy of my home studio.
Some of the casting bronze metal has arrived and thats pretty neat to see, but first I need to mount the wax model onto the plaster flask base. Doug thinks we can cast two at a time and it makes since to maximize the output and conserve the shop supply here. A 6 inch metal sleeve eventually encases the base. A test fit here and were looking good. Maybe get 3 in a pour in the future.
Then the flask gets it's weight recorded and some basic math to compute how much metal will be needed. We were out of time that day and needed some more time to perfect the welds holding the two models to the base. Remember there can't be any weird areas of turbulence or areas that might let small pieces of plaster break off when your pouring as that will end up who knows where in the final cast piece.
The next step will be top finally cast this baby in metal. Fingers crossed.
I will have to try that! I tend to want to let it cool down between injections but maybe your onto something. I don't believe it will effect the mold material to get warmer or even rather hot. It won't hurt a thing to implement your suggestion at some point in the future and I'm always looking to improve the recipe. Thanks for posting here, I appreciate it!
The big day and I get to the shop early. We plan to fill the flask and kiln cure and the plaster and pour the metal later in the evening the same day. The wax models will melt out and burn away in the kiln leaving a cavity exactly matching my medal. I'm pretty excited to see all this effort coming to fruition and have high hopes I can take the piece to the toning phase by the end of the day....
At the very beginning, I wanted to sand cast. I had done some research on that before I met Doug and saw that the sand mold will need a fill channel and also an air outlet channel. This plaster mold has no air outlet channel, just an inlet. Asking how that works, the answer was that air will leave in the porousness of the plaster and when the molten metal is poured, the vacuum machine will draw air through the plaster evacuating the air trapped in the mold cavity. Wow, ok! That sounds cool, can't wait to see that. He adds straws to the insides of the flask that he says will melt out and act as air arteries and will help the vacuum draw air through the mold. Nice!
Doug says we need 3.5 lbs of investment powder and 600 some ml of water. We get that mixing and have a timer set for 9 min. This is the working pot life of the plaster before it starts to harden. We have to hustle because we will need to vacuum all the air out of this mixture. So stir for a few mins then vacuum the pot for 3, Pour in flask, vacuum flask and done in 9 min. Once hardened, the rubber base is removed and the mold is now a metal sleeve with wax models and plaster investment. In the kiln it goes to burn out the wax and cure the plater. That does take long and off to work I go for the day. The kiln is programed to rise to a peak temp, then level off to somewhere around a 1000 degrees and set there for several hours and wait for us to pour the metal.
I couldn't contain myself all day and the time to pour couldn't come fast enough. Nobody at work knows what I'm up to, it's a secret from them for now, just that I'm up to something at the jewelry studio. Doug had sent me a pic earlier in the day of a quick peek at the flask with it glowing cherry red. When I arrived he had been prepping things and had the metal furnace up to temperature when I got there. "Wanna pour some metal?" you know I do!
Other than melting something with my cutting torch, I have no experience with getting the cast metal to its melting point. This isn't anything to play with here, could really burn you. I just stand back and take pictures and let Doug do all this, he's done it countless times. He is commentating though so I don't have to distract him will a barrage of questions right at the critical moments. The casting metal was ordered from a jewelry supply and arrived in chunks. It's all weighed and poured into the furnace holding a crucible. The temp drops and slowly climbs back to the preset temp as to becomes molten and ready to pour.
When all is set, The flask comes out of the kiln and set on the vacuum. Then without hesitation, Doug uses long tongs to lift the molten metal crucible and pours the metal into the mold, done! Just like that. The vacuum runs several min as he turns off all the switches on the kiln and furnace etc. He's watching the top of the molds "button" for how bright the metal is.
We set the flask on the floor and wait a while for the metal to cool, but not too much. We need to dunk the flask in water while its hot so the investment will come off. The thermal shock will boil it off the metal this way and if you were to let it cool completely you would be painstakingly chiseling the investment off your piece. The anticipation is killing me!
Doug immerses the flask and it boils pretty strongly! You can feel it in the floor several feet away and as it dissolves away the medal is finally revealed. We're pretty excited. Doug won't really let me get a good look at it though and he's pretty quiet. Come on now, let me see it....He sees flaws right away. I see it. The surface is really porous and crusty. Weird. I can tell right away we have more work to do. Still, we're heading in the right direction.
There is an ultrasonic tank and a steamer that helps get all the plaster off and we get the piece under some good light. There are some neat parts going on as well. Looks kinda crusty, like some sort of dug up pirate treasure or something. Not really what I'm going for, but still interesting. We can't see much of the area that's between the pieces so we get over to his bench and saw them in half at the sprue.
When we finally get them apart and take a first look were pretty disappointed. Total casting failure. There are some weird looking areas that didn't do what we wanted. Doug is more bummed than I am. I'm saying that if this was easy I probably wouldn't want to do it and he says I'm confusing his silence as disappointment but that he's just thinking deeply about what happened and what to change going forward.
I say give me the pieces as they will go into the catalog as a prototype and I can possibly use them as a toning test subject or something. I leave for the day with the casting flask so I can weld up another model so we can try again the following week. A single this time, until we master the process. Kind of a let down and probably shouldn't have let myself get so built up earlier in the day, still, I always knew this was gonna be harder than it looked and had that in the back of my mind the whole time.
I cant get enough of this thread. Absolutely awesome!
Very good write up and very interesting thread. I look forward to the rest of the story.
You are very creative and artistic!
Don't keep us waiting any longer than necessary!
And have you considered a pewter version? That one would be easier to work with.
I'm interested and happy to talk about medals anytime. Thanks for following along.
So the first cast attempt was a flop but that wasn't getting us down. I had surmised that the molten metal temp was just too much for the plaster and dissolved it on contact. Doug didn't think the was the case. he doesn't see this with his smaller jewelry pieces an thinks that because the size of the pieces make more gases than he's used to. When the molten metal hits the mold a bunch of hot gasses need to escape in the porosity of the plaster, he's thinking that gases coming off each piece were bumping into each other and causing problems. Sure, i could see that. the biggest problems on the pieces were where the two medals were the closest. We will never know. This time we decide lets just mount one mold and cast a single piece before we get any fancier with the set up. We also adjust the kiln temp and cure times. We don't want to change more than that or we won't be able to track what is working or not as we continue.
Were making way better sacrificial wax casting molds now. A few we had made would need hours of work to be usable and that defeated the purpose. I had asked if I could give it a shot and I just rated finding the limits of the wax kettle. I found that holding the piece on rather long it would fill up great, overflow, but the piece inside was nice!
I had also recently bought a small one inch belt sander at Harbor Freight in anticipation of a successful casting. I can use this around the house for whatever as well. Neat tool.
We get a particularly nice one mounted and repeat the whole process. i won't repost all the same photos, but its weigh and mix plaster, vacuum, pour into flask, vacuum, kiln for 12 hours etc and the flask is ready to pour.
We meet up late and with renewed hope and confidence we go for it and pour the metal again. Things come out pretty good! The skull side is sweet, but that dang reverse looks bad again!, Dang it! There is a weird hole in the center of the medal. Now were really shaking our heads. Doug is really quiet this time, more than the last. I'm finding out that him begin quiet is some kind of maturity survival skill he possesses. I should learn and practice that one. Upon closer inspection, The whole piece has issues and it will never pass. All it gives me is a rough example of what is to come. We plan on sticking with it.
I get the piece home and try out my new sander. That tool is sweet! Best 50 bucks I've spent in a while. Anyway, all I really have to tone the piece with unhand is some liver of sulphur I use on my silver jewelry. I give it a try and let it turn the piece black. I've been researching how t drake bronze with acids and thats a tough hill to climb. There e is not a definitive recipe that I can find, but some companies that sell acids for artist. Shipping is a problem too. One company his in Denver and I may have to knock on their door the next time I'm down there, but until then, I'll try this sulphur. Lots to learn till and no since getting ahead of myself until we get a solid casting. This is really all I can do till we recast next week.
I swing the piece back down to Doug's and he pops it into his media vibrator and said it took three hours and it's done. I pick it up and it looks like this.
I feel like were getting somewhere, not as fast as I would have hoped, but about what I realistically expect from a project like this. Guess what?! The next casting fails as well. I don't even mess with that one I just throw it in the box. I'm so glad we didn't roast my original!!!! We are starting to think that the metal we're working with is low quality. I said, Rio Grand is selling an Antique Casting Bronze on their site and we order 5 lbs along with 100 lbs of plaster investment we can share. I have a trip planned and we agree to meet again in two weeks and use the new investment and metal..........
Love the posts, the time you’ve invested not only in the project itself, but also in the comprehensive and fascinating narrative! Riveting!
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Are you sure you don't need a separate gas hole? I think that is standard on larger bronzes.
A number of things can cause the issue you are describing.
The plaster mold is not getting cured long enough and you have moisture or wax remaining, causes out gassing and boiling of your metal. 5 hours minimum, follow the investment makers burn out timeline.
Your plaster mold temperature is too cold when doing the poor, causing areas to skim over and not allowing full detail. Should be well over 1000f when doing this thick of a pour.
Dunking too quickly on thick casts can cause shrinkage and pull away, along with pitting. Nothing wrong with waiting a couple minutes, especially at higher mold temperatures.
Depending on the size of the defects I have found contamination in my wax, usually only smaller specks that would adhere to the plaster causing small pockets in the casting.
Old plaster..... it looks like your refractory material may not be able to handle the temps and pour velocity
My last three casts where 2.5 ounces of gold, 63 ounce .925 silver crown and a 102 ounce .925+ pour loaf bar.
You'll get this, look forward to seeing the final product. It looks pretty good already.
Man this thread was a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Has no idea of the awesomeness of it. Thanks for the exciting educational ride!
mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
I can't thank you enough for this input. I agree, so many things to adjust and I should only adjust one thing at a time so we are making several casts and learning as we go. I can easily implement points 1-4 and we have already replaced the plaster. I think I will target points 1 and 2 first!