SSS! Salty's Silver Statues

[SaltySpitoon]

Ahoy folks, as many of you may or may not know, I enjoy tinkering around with metals, and from time to time get the urge to start casting some things, typically in silver as my preferred medium. I was playing about last weekend, and once again the urge struck, so I got the idea to do a series of silver statues modeled after some famous world statues. The Hare is iconic to St.Petersburg, and well... I like rabbits and related critters.

Here is a little sample of what I made last weekend!



The one you see there was my "rough" draft so to speak, I tinkered with a few methods that I wasn't used to, and ended up with some good and bad results. I intend to do a less rough production this weekend, with the rabbit scaled to the size that I want, and with some details cleaned up. The one cast ended up at around 2.75 oz, I'm aiming for around 5 oz, the size of the model next to it. I'd welcome any feedback, be it comments, questions, or just general hate and discontent. The end goal would be to have a handful made by Easter, possibly before that, because you know, Easter, rabbits. Each would be hand numbered and limited quantity. The price point would likely be around 0.1 BTC for the 5 oz version. I'll have more concrete details and pictures once I have the finished 5 Oz piece in hand.

[krogothmanhattan]

Lovely rabbits..job well done..goodluck.

[wheelz1200]

Salty those are cool!  It amazes people and the talent they possess here.  Your stuff is generally some neat stuff, I think due to time it takes that's a pretty good price point for sure.

[SaltySpitoon]

Salty those are cool!  It amazes people and the talent they possess here.  Your stuff is generally some neat stuff, I think due to time it takes that's a pretty good price point for sure.

It is certainly much higher per ounce over spot than one would pay for the silver bullion I melted to make these, but you are right, there are a lot of hours that go into each piece. As I refine my craft, cleanup is starting to take much less time, but it still takes on average around 18 hours per piece, with half of that requiring constant supervision or action (about 9 hours of just waiting for the kiln to prepare the mold)

Doing multiple at the same time would lower the price point, but the rough estimate that I gave is based on my experience doing these one at a time. If I can prepare three molds and do 3 casts in one sitting, it goes from a total of 54 hours done individually to under 30 anyway. I'm currently sitting at about 0.015 BTC over comparable commercially mass produced statues, though in all honesty they come out better than mine. At the very least I'd like to match them, but nothing sucks worse than realizing you were working for $4 per hour after finishing. I think its probably fair to say that my 0.1 BTC quote for a 5 oz statue is on the higher end, as I'd rather over deliver and under promise. Quantity for sure would lower costs, hint hint group buys hint hint.

Regardless, I'll have the larger model finished this weekend, and I'll post updated pictures. It should come out much better than the smaller one. I skipped a vacuuming step to try and compensate for the low temperature of winter, but that lead to some little pores and uneven bits that you can see especially around the ears.

[JanEmil]

I have around 500 different kinder egg metal figures. Fun to collect. 6 figures in a serie. Maybe try to search google for that. I am buyer if you make something like that in silver.

[SaltySpitoon]

I have around 500 different kinder egg metal figures. Fun to collect. 6 figures in a serie. Maybe try to search google for that. I am buyer if you make something like that in silver.

I'm way ahead of you. The theme of my first set was going to be animals in ancient art.

[SaltySpitoon]

any mantises in that ancient art? 

Dunno, I only have the first three picked out so far. I'll let you know 

[Flying Hellfish]

I'm curious what 3D printer you are using for the models?  Also very curious about the process, are you using graphite molds, do you do all the modelling and machining of the molds?  Graphite is nasty shit to cut.

[SaltySpitoon]

I'm curious what 3D printer you are using for the models?  Also very curious about the process, are you using graphite molds, do you do all the modelling and machining of the molds?  Graphite is nasty shit to cut.

I'm using a Flashforge Creator Pro. Its a pretty decent printer, but I still need to set print speeds pretty slow and finish each thing it prints by hand if I want decent detail. I will retool eventually with resin printers and such, but it hasn't been worth doing so yet. I don't use graphite, I do have the setup to mill graphite to make molds, but I'm not a huge fan of it. Mess aside, it loses detail pretty quickly, after one or two pours enough graphite has been burnt out that minor details will be gone.

I use a jewelry investment powder, which is just fancy high temperature plaster that doesn't contract as it dries. After I've got a 3d print how I want it, I set it in the plaster, use a vacuum chamber to remove any air bubbles (when you don't vacuum you get the little pits you see on the silver rabbit model) and then leave it to dry for a few hours. After that, it goes through a very specific burnout cycle in a kiln that goes from ~350 degrees to 1450 degrees over the course of 12 hours. The plastic vaporizes, and I'm left with a cavity that is a perfect replica of the 3D print. After the metal is poured in, the plaster flask is broken into or dissolved in water, and I'm left with a metal figure.

[Flying Hellfish]

I'm curious what 3D printer you are using for the models?  Also very curious about the process, are you using graphite molds, do you do all the modelling and machining of the molds?  Graphite is nasty shit to cut.

I'm using a Flashforge Creator Pro. Its a pretty decent printer, but I still need to set print speeds pretty slow and finish each thing it prints by hand if I want decent detail. I will retool eventually with resin printers and such, but it hasn't been worth doing so yet. I don't use graphite, I do have the setup to mill graphite to make molds, but I'm not a huge fan of it. Mess aside, it loses detail pretty quickly, after one or two pours enough graphite has been burnt out that minor details will be gone.

I use a jewelry investment powder, which is just fancy high temperature plaster that doesn't contract as it dries. After I've got a 3d print how I want it, I set it in the plaster, use a vacuum chamber to remove any air bubbles (when you don't vacuum you get the little pits you see on the silver rabbit model) and then leave it to dry for a few hours. After that, it goes through a very specific burnout cycle in a kiln that goes from ~350 degrees to 1450 degrees over the course of 12 hours. The plastic vaporizes, and I'm left with a cavity that is a perfect replica of the 3D print. After the metal is poured in, the plaster flask is broken into or dissolved in water, and I'm left with a metal figure.

Thnx for the info, I was curious about the method because I thought the casting had a split line on the chest, yet it had the print lines from the original model (which obviously wouldn't be there if you used graphite molds).  Obviously the line on the chest isn't a split line!  I used to work for the largest HPDC (high pressure die cast) manufacture in Canada (in fact if you've ever been in a V6 Chrysler product there's a 90% chance the tool that cast the engine block came from us).  We had about 15 mills that exclusively cut graphite which we used on our EDM (Electric discharge machines) to "burn" complex inserts.  We had to re-cut each graphite about .050" between burns as the process is hard on the graphite.

I modeled a few bitcoin themed rings and had them "3D printed" (its actually a loss wax process but the wax model is 3D printed so they call it a 3D printed ring lol), which is the same thing you do but with plastic models.  I had one done in .925 and I was actually very impressed with the detail they were able to provide.

There is just something really cool about melting metal and casting it into something else, critters aren't really my thing but I will keep an eye out for anything you do in the future, I really love the death star you did!

[Lesbian Cow]

any mantises in that ancient art?  

Dunno, I only have the first three picked out so far. I'll let you know  

Might I suggest The Cow, most noble of all animals.

Edit to add:

I'm curious what 3D printer you are using for the models?  Also very curious about the process, are you using graphite molds, do you do all the modelling and machining of the molds?  Graphite is nasty shit to cut.

I'm using a Flashforge Creator Pro. Its a pretty decent printer, but I still need to set print speeds pretty slow and finish each thing it prints by hand if I want decent detail. I will retool eventually with resin printers and such, but it hasn't been worth doing so yet. I don't use graphite, I do have the setup to mill graphite to make molds, but I'm not a huge fan of it. Mess aside, it loses detail pretty quickly, after one or two pours enough graphite has been burnt out that minor details will be gone.

I use a jewelry investment powder, which is just fancy high temperature plaster that doesn't contract as it dries. After I've got a 3d print how I want it, I set it in the plaster, use a vacuum chamber to remove any air bubbles (when you don't vacuum you get the little pits you see on the silver rabbit model) and then leave it to dry for a few hours. After that, it goes through a very specific burnout cycle in a kiln that goes from ~350 degrees to 1450 degrees over the course of 12 hours. The plastic vaporizes, and I'm left with a cavity that is a perfect replica of the 3D print. After the metal is poured in, the plaster flask is broken into or dissolved in water, and I'm left with a metal figure.

Thanks for this, so interesting to learn the process.

I am lucky enough to have one of Salty's custom pieces, the Death Star shown here:

[Flying Hellfish]

I love that thing...  I hope it isn't blasphemous or something but I wonder how your death star would look polished?

[SaltySpitoon]

I originally planned on making the statues out of a custom Argentium silver alloy I've been using, but people seem very against anything other than .999 silver. Its 97% silver and 3% other goodies. Its very tarnish resistant, incredibly bright white, and has a much better shine than .999 silver. I made a bracelet yesterday and this is how it turned out.



Not really the greatest photo since my light is really bad, but you can kind of see the shine versus regular silver.