Middle Earth Ranger Forum

I've been interested in learning about pewter casting for a while now, so a little while ago I started experimenting with it. I wanted to make some sort of trinket to give to folks who came to the recent Southeastern Middle Earth Ranger Autumn moot (organized by Erich and Kiriana), so I figured that would be as good a reason to learn as any! I knew I wanted to make some sort of pendant, but I was stumped on the design. Fortunately, Elleth offer to send me one of her leather stamps (and one of her buckles!) in exchange for tooling an armguard plate, and graciously allowed me to use the stamp as a template for the pendants.

I made a plaster mold, rather than carving a soapstone one (which would be much more historically/Middle-earth appropriate) because I was in a bit of a time crunch, and I wanted to focus on learning one skill at a time (handling melted metal rather than carving soapstone). I used Elleth's star-in-a-diamond stamp to make an impression in Sculpy, then trimmed the Sculpy into the shape I wanted to form a template from which to make a mold. After baking the template, I used this method to prepare a plaster mold.

Instead of buying a block of pewter, I used some lead-free silver-bearing plumbing solder from the hardware store. It's not exactly the same, but it's close, and while it's more expensive than pewter by weight, I was able to buy it in smaller amounts as I needed it. The wire also made it very easy to snip off and melt what I needed for each pendant. As you can see, my casting equipment was very high tech -



The ladle was thrifted and my heat source was the gas range in the kitchen (with the hood fan on high!). Not pictured are the leather gloves I wore. After I got the pendants cast, I drilled the holes for the string. I was quite pleased with how they came out!



Like I said, not the most period method, but I learned a lot in the process, and it was frustrating, but ultimately pretty fun!

Oh those are lovely! They came out great!

That looks GREAT, dude! Thumbs-up!! Wonder how it'll tarnish & patina, with the silver content?

Reminds me I need to work up a plaster mold for a run of medallions, which I had originally cast in a Bondo mold (worked and looked great for the first five or so pours, at which point the styrene started breaking down and losing details.)

Very nice, I like the outer diamond shape. Plumbing solder works as pewter, I can't believe I have never thought of that

Thanks, guys!

Udwin wrote:Wonder how it'll tarnish & patina, with the silver content?

The SDS for the solder says it consists of less that 1% silver, so I don't know how much of a difference it'll make, since both silver and pewter darken with time and exposure. I may cheat and hit mine with some gun bluing solution and steel wool to take off some of the shine and create some contrast, though.

Udwin wrote:Reminds me I need to work up a plaster mold for a run of medallions, which I had originally cast in a Bondo mold (worked and looked great for the first five or so pours, at which point the styrene started breaking down and losing details.)

I got 20 pendants (and a few failed pours that I re-cast) out of my mold before the pendants started coming out... odd. I couldn't tell you exactly what was wrong, but the surface looked kind of pitted and rough and didn't have the same shine. As you can see below, I burnt my mold pretty seriously.



A little bit of plaster flaked off near the bottom corner, but I was able to just clip that little bit of "pewter" off the pendants with wire cutters. A higher quality plaster would probably last longer - I was just using DAP Plaster of Paris. I also dusted the mold with powdered graphite after every few castings. I don't know how much it helped, but I doubt it did any harm.

Solder's quite an expensive source of pewter. I found some on ebay that's quite a bit more reasonable per weight (and lead free!)

I like the method of making the mold.

SierraStrider wrote:Solder's quite an expensive source of pewter. I found some on ebay that's quite a bit more reasonable per weight (and lead free!)

Yep! Like I said, solder is more expensive by weight, but I didn't have to buy a pound of it at a time, which is the lowest amount by weight I had found for pewter, and I didn't have to pay and wait for shipping. If I had planned ahead better, I might have bought some pewter online (and I definitely will for future projects), but tweaking with the mold-making process ate up about a week, which I hadn't accounted for.

Taurinor wrote: Instead of buying a block of pewter, I used some lead-free silver-bearing plumbing solder from the hardware store

I have already said I am amazed at this idea this evening I tryed it! I haven't cast pewter since I was doing my A-levels (at my high school using there metal work stuff) and not having equipment has put me off trying it at home. This thread made me realize I already have everything I need in my plumbing tool kit So unpolished first attempt (apologise for image quality):

Awesome! What did you use to make your mold?

Taurinor wrote:Awesome! What did you use to make your mold?

The mold is MDF, the sort with a smooth serface on both sides. It is made by cuting the shape in the middle piece and putting a flat piece on ether side, then clamping together in a vice. Very quick to make but doesn't give a smooth serface at all so needs sanding and polishing, also if the cast shape has a hole in, the mold is only one use, as the metal shrinks when it cools so you have to break the MDF in the middle out.

Iodo wrote:Very quick to make but doesn't give a smooth serface at all so needs sanding and polishing, also if the cast shape has a hole in, the mold is only one use, as the metal shrinks when it cools so you have to break the MDF in the middle out.

It might be due to undercuts in the mold, rather than shrinkage. If any of the edges of the middle piece are at slight angles or have any roughness to them, they'd get caught in the cast piece. I've never worked with MDF molds, though, so it could be shrinkage!

Hunh.... sounds like an updated/cheaper version of cuttlefish molds. Cool!

Taurinor wrote: It might be due to undercuts in the mold, rather than shrinkage. If any of the edges of the middle piece are at slight angles or have any roughness to them, they'd get caught in the cast piece. I've never worked with MDF molds, though, so it could be shrinkage!

I only say it is shrinkage because my first 3D design teacher said it was when I asked why if there's no center in the mold the metal comes out with relative ease but if there's a center it sticks like glue. His reason for the shrinkage as hot things expand so when the pewter is molten it takes up more room, he insisted that if you cast something large enough you can see a gap at the top of the mold, I have no idea how large it would have to be

This could be done more easily with a one-piece mold, since the back is flat and doesn't have any detail.