Casting or fabricating locket parts

Hi Orchid,

A friend of mine gave me a nice little sea urchin shell with the
idea that it could be cast as a pendant. I enlarged the hole in the
back, cleaned it out, coated it with mod-podge and made an rtv mold.
I should have thickened it up with some wax or clay because it was
too thin to make a decent wax and I ended up cutting the mold to
shreds trying to get it to fill. In the end I got one good wax out
of about a hundred, so I thickened that one and successfully cast it
in silver. Now I see that it would make a fantastic locket, and I
would like it to be reproducable. My question is should I make
another mold of the now thickened cast shell and then fabricate the
back and hinge of the locket from sheet wax + tube to fit the wax
from the new mold, then make an rtv mold of the wax back/hinge part?
Or should I make the mold from the cast shell, cast more of them and
then fabricate the back/hinge part in silver separately for each
shell?

Or

should I make the back/hinge part and the bail in silver first, then
make molds from the silver masters? Also there is the issue of a
catch, I have an idea but not sure. Does anyone have a suggestion?.

Thanks,
Douglas

Douglas,

I think that you will find it easier to do a tidy job in metal than
in sheet wax. I like my production work to be both neat, and light.
Both of these are easier in metal than in soft wax. You could carve
hard wax, though, and get it thin & tidy. I work with sheet wax a
lot, but it tends to get a bit heavy at times.

M’lou