At Caid’s 40 year, we had a full metalworking/hotwork area, with a blacksmith, two pewterers, a bead maker and a bronze-caster. It was maybe 102 degrees during the day, which made this kind of effort a bit rough, but it was fun!
The goal of the day for myself was to work with Master Hrodnavar in the use of his amazing bellows and my period-esque furnace (which was more portable than a period Viking era furnace would have been). The bellows worked very well, and we did get a decent flame going! I need to make a good tyre that can shoot the airflow from the bellows directly into the coals, at an angle to promote a good cycle of forced air.
Heating up the moulds (melting the wax out, getting the moulds up to about 400 degrees in this instance. Note that these moulds really need to get up to about 800 F to full cast correctly, which takes a few hours at a carefully stoked coal fire. We are limited on what we can do with those here in Southern California’s fire country. These were very small, uncomplex “tester” moulds however, not designed for anything special. I had also brought along the sand-casting kit for some full casts. The real job of the day was to test out the furnace.
Spent day two finishing off what was cast (mostly in sand, though two trefoils did come out!
Crescent Artisan 2018
This event was just about my showing off the Gotlandic animal head brooches, which I saw for the first time on a trip to Gotland. I fell in love with the simple complexity of these brooches. They consist of several pieces, and are incredibly customizeable in design.
For details on these and the processes used, the documentation is here: brooch doc
Theo's Metalworking Page 