Once a Silver Artisan masters the basic pouring of silver into re-usable molds, the next logical step is to try some Sand Cast Pours. This is where you impression sand with the object you want to pour so as to make the sand into a single use mold. It's relatively cheap way to take the next step, but there is an art to it and technique is important. As part of my short series about Smithys Bullion today I wanted to show you some of his Sand Casted Silver.
First up are these little beauties. 5.6 and 5.7 oz each these Bolts come up very nice in the finish but it took a bit of work to get them into this state.
These bolts were done with a closed cast (sand on both sides) and you can see how rough they were when they first came out. It took a lot of extra work to get these bolts looking schmick. Here's what Smithy had to say about sand casting in general :-
Not only do I lose silver with the melt but sand cast pieces leave a rough surface to the piece which has to be sanded back to leave a nice clean surface for my stamping, which loses more silver.
Next up are the Viking and the Wolf that were open cast (sand on only one side) and these bad boys look very sexy. The toning on the Wolf piece gives it a nice funky finish.
This Kombi is another open sand cast weighing in at a chunky 8 oz. If you know a nomad stacker this one would make a great gift.
Finally these Horseshoes are 4 oz each and they were also open sand casts. Horseshoes are generally lucky and if they're made of silver then they're probably even more-so. I'd be hanging these on the wall of my office for sure.