Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Tree of Life Jewelry Casting Process





I thought it would be interesting to document the casting process that Mark uses to create our Tree of Life Jewelry and Sonora Star Jewelry. 1)Pulling the wax model from the rubber mold 2)Sizing of each ring - in the wax - he does this so each completed ring does not have a solder seam 3)Wax 'Tree' - he attaches each individual ring to this. A step that is missing is when he surrounds the Tree with plaster, lets it harden then bakes in a kiln to burn out the wax. 4)He then casts them with a centrifical caster. Here are Cast 'Tree's 5)Pieces are cut off the 'Tree' to work on - here you see raw and semi-finished castings. From here they filed, sanded, polished, bezels soldered, colored, stones set then polished again! Overall, there are a total of 14 steps to create each piece of Tree of Life Jewelry.
Each one is made by Mark with care and love.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

thanks for sharing ~ it is really neat to see the process and how much time and care go into each hand crafted piece!

Carla said...

Thanks. It is a neat process and takes a lot of steps. Mark wanted me to include allll but I didn't want to bore readers. :)