Casting a Tiki

     

   The other day, during Arts and Crafts class at Lorain County Community College, I made a clay tiki head while the rest of the students did their clay projects.  A couple of students had made some small, charm like hearts and such, so I thought it would be a good time to demonstrate how to make a plaster mold of a simple object and pour a pewter copy. 

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This is a picture of the dried and unfired clay tiki head. I removed the clay tiki before it was dried, because it peels out a lot easier. 

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This is a picture of the clay tiki head in the mold.  Here it is already dried and I had already removed it and did a little carving.  But hopefully you get the idea of of the plaster mold and the 

clay tiki head I modeled.

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This is a the clay tiki head beside the plaster mold.

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The torch is starting to warm up the metal inside the crucible.  The plaster mold on top of the brick

has been sitting on a hot plate for 15+ minutes to get it warm.  That way it's less likely to break from the thermal shock of pouring molten pewter into it, which is about 500 degrees.

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Starting to move in a bit closer to hasten the melting of the metal.

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Almost ready to pour.

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Pouring the molten pewter into the plaster mold.  I like this shot, something about molten metal and fire that looks so appealing.



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The mold full of hot, molten metal, starting to cool.  You can't see it but the surface of the metal 'kinda swirls around and and  tiny bits of gas and material are ejected up as it cools.  It's pretty neat looking!

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The cooled pewter tiki head being slid from the mold.

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The mold with the original clay tiki and the freshly removed pewter tiki.

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All done, except I still have to remove the excess metal flash, and then do some sanding

and buffing.

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Three shots of the finished tiki head.



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The one on the left is the clay original, glazed and

fired up to cone 4-5.
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The middle one is sanded, filed, buffed, and strung on a cord.
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The one on the right is the second unfinished casting poured from the same mold.


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   This is another tiki.  I'm not obsessed about making tikis, but they are fun. I've carved them, fabricated them,  and etched them.  This one is a lost wax casting in sterling silver that I soldered onto a ring.  I did the original wax fast and as you can see from the close-up photo, pretty crudely. 

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