I’m Wyndham Dennison, a potter that also works with silver. I have
learned a technique to create free form silver pieces by heating
sterling to melt temp then pouring it(1/4 oz) or less into a dish of
water giving the random almost crystaline appearance.
I wish to be able to do this with gold, using small nuggets that are
about #14 size. I have tried with about a gram of these but when I
get the gold up to temp (molten) and pour this into water, all I get
is an oblong or rounded piece, not the delicate lacey work that I get
from sterling.
is the mass too small to retain the molten state as it enters the
water or…
the temp of the gold must be hotter than a benzomatic w/oxy can
achieve, even though it is ina shiny liquid state.
is there another material other than water that would work.
Liquid wax,pine neddles,???
Since gold is a very expensive toy, I hope someone might have a
thought. Thanks again, glad to be part of this forum. Wundham
Dennison
Silver has different properties than gold, for example better themal
conductivity.
here are some suggestions to experiment with:
vary the pour height
vary melt temperature
add ice cubes to water
add other materials to the water
silver seems to crystallize, sometimes, almost by looking at it.
Gold, on the other hand, forms perfect crystals in nature, however
the crystals are almost always formed out of solution exchange,
rather than by crystalline action in a mass of metal (as with
silver)
the good news: as you experiment, you simply keep remelting the
results from the experiments that do not work. you will waste some
time, maybe a little torch gas, but you will learn quite a bit about
the metal as you go.
Try casting into bunched broom straws. Natural broom straws, cut off
the broom and packed tightly on end into a small tomato paste sized
metal can. Water is in the bottom of the can and the can is set on a
fire proof surface. I do this sometimes in workshops and students
seem to enjoy it.
The result is a variety of stalagtite or icicle shapes that can be
cut up and incorporated in a piece or even rubber molded to reproduce
a particularly compelling shape. I’ve often molded a spontaneously
generated bit that I’ve found to be particularly intrigueing and then
cast it in different metals.
Vary heights and temps as others have said. You will also find that
the different intrinsic weights or specific gravities of metals will
effect the outcome. Gold alloys, being heavier than sterling will
travel farther down the broom straws but will tend to remain more
clumped. Sterling will produce more attenuated forms but freezes up
much faster…
Good luck and have a fire extinguisher and a quench bucket standing
by.
You got some good suggestions-- here’s one more thing you might like
to try. You can get lacy “splotches” of metal, silver or gold, this
way.
You will need two nice smooth charcoal blocks, and a rectangular
cake pan or something similar. Set one bolck in the pan, making sure
the block is level. Melt a small amount of metal on the block, wait
maybe one second, then smack the second block down onto the molten
blob (that’s why it’s in the pan-- in case any metal escapes). Pick
up the top block and see what you “got”. If you don’t like it, just
melt it again.
It takes a little practice to figure out how much metal, how much
time, how much pressure, but the “splots” can be very cool-looking.
(I fuse them to silver backing.) Have fun!