The last week of the fall semester I worked on a side project which involved making my mom a pendant for a stone that I cut and polished. The stone has sea shells in it and my mom wanted the pendant to be ocean themed. I bought plastic coral online and cut pieces off to put around the bezel. Most of the work was assembling the wax to the way I wanted it. I attached thin pieces of wax to the high points of the pendant. This would ensure that the gold would reach the tips during casting. I attached all of the pieces of wax to a thick long piece of wax. The large piece of wax was then attached to the pendant and the other end was connect to a rubber button. The button creates an opening for the gold to go into after the wax has been burned out in the kiln. Before the wax was burned out a plaster substance called investment poured into a flask that’s attached to the button.

Cleaning up after casting was a lot of work. The investment was still coating the pendant and it was difficult to get it off. I used a tumbler which has shards of metal that clean the hard to reach areas as it spins. Once it was clean I cut the extra pieces of gold off that was apart of the button. The extra pieces can be used later on for a different project. After casting its mostly cleaning up the gold and getting rid of any blemishes from the cast. I didn’t set the stone in the bezel I epoxied it because the metal was too thick to push it over. My mom really loves her pendant and she wears it everyday. I feel like this project was a success and I hope to get better at casting jewelry.