On the Wax Carving Bench

Here a little update whats on my bench right now and progress of recent orders. Finished carving all these waxes for engagement and wedding rings. All these were ordered as palladium rings so they were sent to my palladium caster in Portland. Since palladium has a very high melting temperature I can't cast those in my own studio setup. Most of these waxes started as a computer model in Rhino3D. Then they were milled on my CNC mill and adjusted further by hand to remove milling supports, adjust settings to fit each individual stone and finally smoothing of surfaces. The cleaner and smoother the wax, the better the casting will be and needs less cleanup time afterwards.

Sometimes it takes a couple trials and error to get the waxes coming out right. These waxes below are for a ring from my cluster collection is fragile in wax and during cleanup I broke a couple versions. Finally I got lucky after making some minor adjustments in the original computer file and re-milling it again. So the one on the right could be send to the palladium caster too.

It will take about a week until I get the palladium castings back and start the clean up. meanwhile I can work on some other orders.

Last week I already did cast some other rings in silver and silver/palladium, which I can now start cleaning up and get them finished soon. This will be my work for this week to complete. Some of these need to go out by the end of the week

Rough ring castings