Today's offering from the furnace is a silver 308 bullet

It is made from from scrap sterling silver and moulded using delft clay in a 2 part metal casting flask.

The scrap

The bullet is made from this pile of scrap silver, i also made a lion head torc yesterday and this is what i did with the rest.

Casting flask

The replica bullet is lightly coated in talc to stop it sticking to the clay, then one half of the casting flask is packed with clay and the bullet it pressed in. Then the clay is coated in talc so both halves of the flask don't stick together, they other half is placed on top and packed together.

The bullet is carefully removed being careful not to move the clay and the funnel is cleared allowing for a better pouring spout.

The casting flask is held together by two large clips, these are not ideal as they are plastic and i have to be extra careful as the crucible gives off a lot of heat.

Pouring the silver

I could not take a pic of my pouring but you can still see the silver is molten.

This is the moment where it is a win or a fail and to be honest i was quite relieved as the cast came out quite clean, i used some tongues to remove the bullet and i quenched in water.

Removing the spur

As you can see it does not look pretty at the moment but this will change.

I used my jewellers saw to remove the spur and used a grinding wheel the remove the excess and flatted off with sandpaper.

Sanding and polishing

I first sanded down with 240 grit paper and worked up to 600. I then used white compound which removes the larger marks.

I then used jewellers rouge compound to buff the bullet up, the final stag was to hand polish using Goddards silver polish.

The finished product

So here it is all finished standing next to the replica bullet i used.

Here it is one the scales, it weighs in at 51.7 grams, i hope you have enjoyed my post and please leave a comment or follow me to see more tales from the furnace. If you have ideas for items to cast let know