Master of Wax Work!

Let me introduce my great friend of mine, Scott, who is an awesome jeweler and one of the master craftsman I know. Scott really amuses me and our other fellow metal / jewelers with his great detailed works. Two semesters ago I took a Casting class; through failure and success, I have learned many lessons from many difficulties that I have faced during project making period. Scott and Michael (one of my great instructor) has helped me a lot to overcome these challenges and I would like to thank both of you for giving me great words of help and words of encouragement!

So what is a wax carving? Wax carving is a model that you will carve / mold / change shape with your hands by using many different kinds of tools such as; rotary tools, saws, files and burins or gravers tools. Now, carving the wax from a solid block to a detailed carving piece takes a lot of time and patience; it's not a piece of cake, I tell you! After long hours of carving, you will use different methods to "Cast" your wax piece. The most popular way to cast these days is the lost wax casting process (you can read that in details). Then after you cast your wax piece, your wax carving model will replace the exact model with the molten metal that you will pour (gold or silver or bronze). Then you can clean up the surface and finally, the artist will reach to finishe the piece all shiny and polished up! Some bling-bling ya' know ;)

As I mentioned earlier, it takes a lot of time and patience to carve out the wax model to a desired look (to perfection). And Scott is really good at it! Each of his wax models is very precise and detailed. He is also good using his burins or gravers tools. I often view his in-progress work photos and the finished work photos from Scott's Flickr website.

This is me, watching the art gallery and carving at same time.
I'm using the blue Ferris wax here with simple wax carving tools.
But I plan to increase my skill by using more advanced tools like the burins or gravers in the future!

Now, let me show you some of Scott's AMAZING works! This ring below was discovered today from his Flickr; this is one of my favorite ring from his other wonderful works.

 

Isn't it beautiful?

Now before I show you Scott's casted ring, I'll show you the wax model photo. Let me show you what the wax model looks before you can see the actual casted ring!

Scott's wax model

Here's another example of his carved wax; this one's a pendant

After Scott has casted and cleaned up the piece, he has soldered a rod in the end as a "Sprue" so he can now make a master rubber mold (Vulcanize mold). Thus, if he desires to create another exact piece he can inject a wax into his permanent mold to create multiples so that will save his time to carve out another piece. The commercial world of jewelry industry is dominated by its casting mold procedure (from the one "master piece" of the mold, they make duplicate to thousands of wax models). And that is how they sell thousands of same model of jewelry. On the other hand, people like Scott and others, we designs and makes one of a kind jewelry that are limited in numbers or just one in the whole wide world! And that is the difference of common commercial jewelry that you'll see in the Jewelry District vs. Commissioned all-hand made-Jewelry for you!

 

Here's Scott, my current craftsmanship hero of the month!

Thank you for giving us joy with your wonderful works.

Someday I want to carve wax models like you! 

You can also visit My Flickr website to see my past wax carving projects.