Category: Casting

Baronial Coronets: Mounts

Casting, Metalwork

I cast pewter mounts to decorate the center of each section: towers for the sides and back, and a rondel with the baronial arms for the front. Each mount was modeled in several stages in Sculpey, using Tandy quick rivets as a base.

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These were used to sand cast pewter copies, which were then cleaned and mounted to the brass sections.

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The field of the rondel on the front was painted using Testor’s gloss enamel paint.

For Adela’s coronet I wanted to reduce the weight as much as possible, so I made a thinner tower mount using a soapstone mold.

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I also made a new rondel using the same method:

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Signet Ring: Casting and Engraving

Casting

When we last saw the mold for this project, it had just come out of the oven, firm but squishy in the middle. At this point I still needed to carve a sprue so I could pour the metal in. If I had done this when the dough was still wet, it probably would have worked fine. If I had waited until everything was bone dry, it probably would have worked fine. Instead, I had a dry shell with a doughy inside, which was not at all inclined to cut smoothly. I tore out a vaguely funnel shaped chunk and hoped for the best. Things were not looking good for the home team. The inside of the sprue looked awfully moist still, and I knew that moisture and hot metal did not go well together. How would I dry things out in there? Propane torch? Sure, why not?

So now I had a somewhat drier, charred mold that still was awfully squishy. Still no clue if it would work at all. I melted some pewter, put the spacer dowel into the cavity, held it together with a gloved hand and poured. All the metal poured right out the bottom. On the down side, things were clearly not lining up properly. On the up side, nothing had exploded!

Since the mold was still squishy, I figured I could squish the two halves together harder and close up the gap that was letting the metal run out. I clamped it between two pieces f wood and tried again. A little metal stayed in, but most of it still ran out the bottom. Clearly, the bottom of the mold was the problem area, so I moved the clamp down to the bottom edge of my boards:

Success! The metal stayed in and filled up my horrible excuse for a sprue. All I had to do now was pop the two halves apart and take out the first of many lovely castings.

Honestly, considering the utter lack of care and patience I put into this, I’m surprised things went this well. The mold was destroyed, but I had a vaguely ring-shaped lump of metal clinging to the dowel like a robotic kraken. Would I be able to salvage anything from it? I only had one chance to make something out of all this mess.

I clipped the tentacles off the mass of metal until I could knock the dowel free of its grip. Some time with the belt sander and various Dremel attachments allowed me to whittle it down into something fairly ring shaped. The face of the ring was sculpted as a circle, so you can see how much the mold had gotten squished during the casting process.

As I said earlier, I had never really done any sort of engraving. After all this work, I was hesitant to dive right in without any proper tools or clue what I was doing. I tinkered around with my made-from-a-screw graver, an awl, and a dental pick on the back of another stray casting to see how the tools worked. Unreliably, but well enough to give it a try. I scratched and scraped, buffed and polished, and started to see something like my monogram appearing. I ended up getting out one of the Dremel engraving burrs to get the etching deeper, then dragged the dental pick through the grooves again to give a less mechanical effect. I was just about happy with what I had until I realized that this was a seal matrix; the letters were supposed to be in reverse!

The belt sander made short work of my first attempt, and I used what I had learned the first time to make a second, larger rendition of the same design. A bit of punching with an awl around the border, and I had something passable:

So, would I try this mold method again? Maybe not for something this big. A smaller, thinner piece – especially one with a single sided mold – would probably work better, and dry faster. For a ring like this sand casting is probably a better option. As experiments go, though, this was not too bad. I ended up with a functional (if not perfect) piece, and learned a few things. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight without being woken up by any other bright ideas.

Signet Ring: Making the Mold

Casting

I’ve been wanting a signet ring for a long time. I was daunted by the idea of engraving (since all the extant signets I can find were engraved), so I’ve been putting it off. At 1:00 this morning, my brain decided that it was time to start this project, and so I did, if only so I could tell my brain to shut up and go back to sleep.

Part of the impetus for finally starting this project was Margherita Battistina‘s idea of making molds out of salt dough. Cheap, easy, reusable; what’s not to like? I figured it was worth a shot. After all, all I needed was a vaguely ring-shaped object that I could grind down to the shape I wanted.

I made my dough with 2c flour, 1c table salt, 1 c water, and about 1T lime juice. I mixed it and kneaded it until it was nice and smooth. I built a frame out of a couple strips of mat board and some tape.

I squished a chunk of dough into the frame and smoothed it down. So far, so good.

The ring master was made of Sculpey wrapped around a piece of the only suitably sized dowel I could lay my hands on in the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, it was exactly the size of my pinky. I baked the Sculpey and it was good to go.

Here is where we begin to see the perils of impatience. Ideally, I would make the impression of my master in the bottom half of the mold, let it dry completely, perhaps sand it flat, and then make the second half of the mold to match. Instead, I coated the first half of the mold with oil, popped the master in, and…

Smashed another chunk of dough right on top. I tamped it down as best I could (with a peanut butter jar) to try to get a good impression of my master. Did it work?

Looks like it did! Now, both halves of the mold were pretty flexible at this point, and I didn’t want them to get misaligned, so…

I put the two halves back together (with the master tucked inside), separated by a piece of plastic wrap. I set this sandwich on a wire rack so the bottom could dry as well.

Now, what I probably should have done at this point was let the mold air dry by leaving it alone for a very long time. I did not do this. I went back to sleep, got up and went to work, came home and popped both halves into a 300 degree oven. The  outside faces of the two halves were pretty dry at this point, so I wasn’t as worried about them getting misaligned. Unfortunately, this dough is basically very unappetizing bread. Despite being unleavened, the mold halves started rising slightly, which I knew would make a mess of my casting. The dough was dry on the outside now (more or less), but still squishable in the middle. I decided I would go ahead and give it a shot before things went any further afield.

How did it turn out? Tune in next time…

Laurel Badge

Casting

I knew that I would need some Laurel bling to wear at 12th Night (bad form to be stealthy out of kingdom), but I didn’t have anything that I really thought would go with the new suit. I’m going to make a new hat that will need something interesting on it, so I decided to make a badge for the hat. For what I wanted it was going to be easier to make a positive master and sand cast it than carve a mold. Besides, I really didn’t need the ability to make more than a few of these. I rolled out a disc of sculpey and stamped the leaves into it with a tool carved from a bit of plastic sprue. I sketched out the rook in the middle with the tip of an x-acto knife and then baked it. Once it was baked, I trimmed the edges down to a nice sharp bevel and carved the rest of the rook out. The finished master went into the sand and I poured up a copy, using a nail to make a couple of prongs on the back side of the mold. I bent the prongs into loops that I will use to sew it on to the hat. Some old model paint did an admirable job of faux enamel for the recessed bits. It’s not really based on anything particularly historical, but I’ll give myself a pass today.

Don Carlos Belt: Finished

16th century, Accessories, Casting

I made the mold back out of a piece of scrap wood, with nails for registration pins. I needed to drill out the back for rivets on the loop terminals, and I decided to carve out the back side of the hook a little bit to give it some more thickness. To make sure everything lined up, I put a little acrylic paint on the front side of the mold, then pressed the two halves together to transfer it. It gave me enough of an idea of where the edges would line up so that I could put things in more or less the right spot. I poured up a few sets, but I started getting some discoloration in the metal (probably from impurities from the wood) so I only ended up with two usable sets of loops. I cut the old hardware off the belt and installed the new bits. So far, it looks like a winner!

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Owl Face Belt Hook: Research Fail

16th century, Accessories, Casting

After making the loops for my new belt clasp, I went looking for options for the S-hook that were not snakes or swans. In the process, I ran across this link that pretty much blows a hole in the idea that the lion head belt terminals I found are actually 16th century. They seem to be more of the 18th century military belt clasp type. I’m going back through 16th century portraits now, and so far all I’m finding are surface-mounted terminals like I used on my old belt. I’m also less sure now about the zoomorphic decoration on the hooks for 16th century belts, but I think that will stand up in the end.

Edited to add: I managed to find a few examples that were clear enough to see what’s going on with the clasp. Surface mounted loops, as I expected, but also no clear evidence of the zoomorphic S-hook. There was more variety than I expected, and less surface decoration on the hooks, so that may be a blessing in disguise, from a casting standpoint. There seem to be both S-shaped hooks and sort of curvy M-shaped hooks as well…

Owl Face Belt Hook: Casting the Loops

16th century, Accessories, Casting

I needed to make a new belt to go with the Alborghetti suit, so I found a new type of belt hardware to play with. Serafina came down today to work on some of her casting, so I cranked out a quick mold that I thought might do the trick. The extant piece I’m emulating has a lion face, with a perpendicular loop on one side for the belt hook and a wide rectangular loop on the other for the belt. Rather than make two molds for the two different belt loops, I tried to make a single mold that could be turned into either one. The owl face is from the household badge.


Alborghetti Suit: Waistband and Belt

16th century, Casting

Last night I tested how the doublet and trunk hose would work together. I pinned the trunk hose foundation to the lacing strip on the doublet, then put everything on and tried to sit down. The pins in the back immediately popped out. Discouraged but still hopeful, I went back and basted the doublet and hose together instead, and this time it seemed to work much better. I went ahead and covered the waistband with black wool, and plan to put eyelets in it sometime this week. I’ll also start working on binding the edges of the doublet and putting in buttonholes. Also sleeves. Each piece will bring me closer to the final fit of the whole suit. Finishing the trunk hose will probably happen last.

Something else that concerned me was whether the looser fit of the doublet would affect how my belt would sit at the waistline. The good news is that I think the belt won’t have any problem staying in place. The bad news is that my current belt is a good bit too short and can’t easily be lengthened. Since I sand cast the current clasp, I can’t just pour up another one easily. Instead I plan to make a new clasp in a stone mold. I looked at several different styles for the new clasp, and I think I’m leaning toward this one:

It will be easier to cast the loop if I don’t have to mess with rivets, and I’ll be able to move it to another belt more easily. Rather than casting a closed loop, I think I’ll make a flat bar and bend it into a loop. I can replace the lion head with an owl face as well, though it’ll take a little trickery to be able to cast both sides out of one mold. I have some ideas about how to manage that. I may just use the old S-hook for now until I decide I really want to make a new one. It would take a well-registered two-sided mold, which is hassle that I’ll avoid as long as I can.