Jewelry Mold Making
A hollow container into which liquefied or molten metal like molten gold or platinum or titanium or silver or copper or molten alloys like brass or sterling silver is poured to set or cool in a desired shape and in a desired design is called a jewelry making mold.
When a jeweler uses a mold to create and impart eye catching designs to his metal jewelry, it brings down the cost of the piece of jewelry drastically for the process is very fast and hardly requires any time, requires minimum or no use of labor and large numbers can be churned out in this super fast process ensuring mass production at a quick pace.
Previously jewelry molds were created out of beeswax. Nowadays other different varieties of wax are made use of to create jewelry making molds like:
- Non shrinking wax
- Shrinking wax
- Sticky wax
- Soft wax
- Hard wax
During the bygone eras jewelry making molds were created out of clay sourced from river shores. The clay formed a seat in which was embedded the wax mold. A hole was created and kept open in the wax object. This was how a wax jewelry mold was created and shaped.
In contemporary times the seat in which the wax object is to be embedded is made of a special heat resistant plaster popularly known as investment powder.
As pointed out earlier jewelry making molds were mostly clay molds and wax molds and they were manufactured using very crude and outdated methods. In days of the past, the process of melting the metal involved fanning the fire. On top of this fire was kept a clay receptacle. The latter contained the solid metal.
As the clay pot began to get heated up due to the fire burning beneath it, the metal started melting and the molten metal was slowly emptied into the clay mold. After the molten metal cooled down, hardened and took on the shape/design of the clay mold, the latter was broken to release the designed and well formed jewelry piece.
Contemporary times have witnessed a sea change in the method of creating jewelry out of molds. The whole process bespeaks sophistication and technological progress. The jewelry metal is now melted with the help of a torch which renders the oxygen and gas combustible.
The molten metal is also of a thick and sticky consistency like treacle and has to be forced into the recesses and inner crevices of the mold using sophisticated and fast techniques.