Progress & Shipping!

I cast the master of David's wedding ring last night.  Running a standard eight hour burnout cycle, that became ten.  The blue carving wax has a higher melting temperature so it required an extra hour during the first temperature step.  Then, because we used styrene for the Ridgeliens, I added an extra hour to make the 1350 degrees heat soak stage four rather than three.  Then the final hour at the "cooled down" to 1050 degrees for casting.

I poured at 8:37 PM and all went well.  Then fifteen minutes for the flask to cool enough to quench safely.  Then I could finally quench and take a look at the ring!  (You never know until the piece comes out of the quench bucket.)  It looked good.  So into a glass jar in the ultrasound for devesting.  After and hour I put it into another jar for pickling while in the ultrasound.

It spent the night in the pickle.  I checked it just a minute ago and it looks great!  So it's time to pull it, neutralize the pickle and get to work on it!  (Oh, pickle is a very mild acid solution used after every soldering or heating step.  It's neutralized with baking soda.)

So next I'll de-sprue and grind the ring.  Then a fine grinding step, then a high polish buffing.  Then it goes to Pat for detailing, texturing the base of the Ridgelines areas, and re-cutting the seat for the stone if it needs it.

Then the ring comes back to me for final approval and then molding!  I'll try to take more photos as we go today.  In the meantime, here's a photograph I took this June of the 'watering hole".

Yesterday we finished the special order ring so it's shipping today.  We have another special order and a re-stringing job finished and ready to ship off to Arrowcraft too.  It's going to be a busy day and it looks like we may have lots more rain coming.