cool, ^^ been busy it seems.

Yah, I always have to have something to do.

Very nifty! it's interesting to see the process of sorts, like that. It's hard to picture that it used to be wax and not metal. The textures you get are very nice <3

That's why I did this piece and the various updates to it, I wanted to show how a piece like that goes from wax original to a finished, polished piece of jewelry.

It's quite interesting! Thank you for sharing ^__^ I'm currently learning about casting polymer clay into resin which is a very different process, but I know many of my favorite horse sculptures were made using a lost wax process. Is the wax difficult to work with? I was always curious if it was a harder texture more more...I dunno...earwaxy? texture XD

Never done polymer clay into resin casting. What is that process like?

Wax isn't terribly hard to work with but you have to know what you want before you start. There are lots of different sorts of wax, from reasonably soft (mostly used for sprues) to really hard wax that you can carve with knives and files. I haven't dealt with any wax that is ear-waxy in texture but it might exist. Most of the wax I work with is a medium hardness wax that is used to in a melting vessel to go into a rubber mold. I work with it because its what the pendant bases are made of so it all melts together well. Its not wise to use wax with really different melting points because sometimes it doesn't stick together. For example, the sprue wax, which can be molded by hand because its so soft, is a pain to get to stick to other waxes because the melting points are so different.

I would have never thought the difference in melting points would make such a difference. That makes a lot of sense though. I'm always impressed wehn I see the work people do with it--it looks difficult from the outside.

For polymer clay stuff, the process can destroy the original, although that hasn't happened with our stuff yet. You have to make the original with some idea of how it will be cast and avoid details that would likely catch bubbles in the mold. At the moment, we're doing jointed dolls, so each peice is individualy molded.

It's very time consuming to make the mold in silicone, but once you have it, it's done for 50-100 castings. Not all the casts come out right the first time though, sometimes you get bubbles or the resin cures before it gets in the mold (we use a very quick cure resin, so sometimes it's as little as 30 seconds to pour tht stuff in there!) It's also affected by a whole lot of factors--the temp, how well it was mixed, etc. So those 50-100 castings might only result in 30 usable casts. But then, we're beginners, so I'm sure our efficiency will get better with time.

All the stuff is very expensive though, so each mistake makes your heart beat a bit quicker!

I bet you will get better, gods knows I improved over a summer's worth of metal casting.
The bit about air bubbles I think is universal. I had issues with air bubbles in this casting run, lots of little balls of copper that resembled tumors. And metal casting can be just as finicky. Humidity can play a big part in the results.
The casting materials, as near as I can tell, aren't horribly expensive per cast but between the fuel and the electricity for the kiln, it can get really costly. I am so happy I can still do casting using my school's equipment.