[Sca-cooks] casting

[Chass Brown]

Stefan.. where do you buy your soap stone.. help a fellow ansteorran out 
lol. I need a few large pieces of it. I use it to make the blanks for my 
hammer press as well as making a few hand carves pieces. (also wanting to 
make a tablero board out of hand carves pieces). Also where do you buy your 
pewter?


Chass of Rundel of Ansteorra aka of the SCA aka
Charinthalis Del Sans of the portable Chariot
Honorable Recruiter of the House of the Red Shark (Have you seen my Belaying 
Pin??)
Maison Du Corsaire Rouge
Muddeler of Mead, Ailment of Ale, Whiner of wine.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stefan li Rous" <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
To: "SCA-Cooks maillist SCA-Cooks" <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 1:13 AM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] casting


> Capt Elias declared:
>> Never pour really hot metals into a cold mold...
> I wouldn't go quite that far. It depends upon the metal being used and 
> thus the temperature and the molding technique used.
>> When possible, especially when doing finicky work like investment
>> casting, preheat the mold.
>>
>> Here's a investment casting trick I learned a long time ago...
> <snip of useful info when doing wax investment casting>
>
> I do pewter casting in carved soapstone molds, which happens to be a 
> period technique. The amount of metal is small and the temperature is 
> around 600 degrees. Hot, but not explosively hot.
>
> I don't see a safety problem pouring the liquid pewter into a room 
> temperature mold. I've had no reason to cool a mold down. You do indeed 
> most likely need the mold to be warm to hot in order to get a clean pour. 
> However, rather than explicitly heating the mold in the oven or whatever, 
> I recommend simply pouring in the pewter a few times. This will heat the 
> mold sufficiently so that soon you should get clean castings. The first 
> ones, done into the cool then warmer mold, I simply recycle by tossing 
> them back into the melting pot.
>
> This is probably getting too off topic for this list. I do wonder what 
> medieval kitchen items might have been cast out of pewter, though.
>
> There is a limit to how big an object you can cast using a simple pewter 
> casting in a stone mold. I've not tried to cast a spoon for instance. Of 
> course bigger items could probably be done by using a sling to get the 
> metal into the mold completely.
>
> For those who might be interested in trying some pewter casting, see these 
> files or contact me off-list.
> casting-msg      (144K)  6/25/02    Casting pewter and other metals.
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/casting-msg.html
> pewter-msg        (16K)  2/ 7/01    Pewter in period. References. Sources.
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/pewter-msg.html
> soapstone-msg     (25K)  7/23/04    Use of Soapstone in period. Modern 
> sources.
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/soapstone-msg.html
>
> Stefan
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas 
> StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
>
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