Lost Wax Casting: A Beginner's Guide

Lost wax casting is a time-honoured technique used for centuries to create exquisite metal objects, including jewellery. This technique empowers artisans to produce detailed, symmetrical designs that traditional metalworking methods often struggle to replicate. For beginner jewellers eager to dive into this fulfilling process, grasping the basics of lost wax casting is essential.

What is Lost Wax Casting?

At its core, lost wax casting involves creating a wax model of the desired object, encasing it in investment plaster, and then melting away the wax to leave a cavity into which molten metal is poured. This process not only retains the intricate details of the original design but also allows for highly customised creations.

Cultures around the world, from the ancient Egyptians to modern-day artisans, have employed this technique. It is particularly valued for its ability to create larger and more 3D or complex shapes that are trickier to make using fabrication.

How Can I Learn It?

We have a number of ways to get into lost wax at Workspace:

6 Week Blocks - these are run on a Wednesday Evening in both Wellington and Christchurch. Students get to try hard and soft wax, rings and flat (relief) carving, even cast in place stone setting. The longer format of these classes means a deeper dive into the technique, more opportunities for castings and more understanding of issues that can arise.

Lost Wax In Two - these quick fire classes are held in all studios over two 3-hour sessions held two weeks apart. They are in either hard wax or soft wax, and are really only enough time to create and cast one piece.

Online Courses - the beauty of working in wax is that you don't need a ton of tools, and you can do it at home! We have three high quality online courses in lost wax, Rings, Soft Wax and Relief Carving. These courses were professionally produced and include video, photos and text in an easy step by step format.

Once students know how to work with wax and clean up their metal pieces they can take advantage of our Casting Service to get their wax models cast.

The Process of Lost Wax Casting

Step 1: Creating the Wax Model

This is your part! Begin by sculpting your design in jeweller's wax. This may involve hand-carving or sculpting depending on the desired outcome. The level of detail here is critical, as the quality of your wax model will significantly influence the final product. It's worth getting your piece as finished as possible to save time in metal clean up.

Most beginners make their pieces way too big, as the wax is so light it's hard to imagine how it will feel in metal, so we are always getting folks to fine their pieces down.

Step 2: Bring in the professionals

In our classes we send the waxes to our casting partners to professionally cast them. This saves a ton of time and money when done though industrial channels.

Each wax model is attached to a casting tree (they do about 20 rings at a time), encased in plaster then put in a massive furnace to melt out the wax.

Step 3: Next, the metal

Molten metal is fired into the cavity of the tree to fill every line of the impressions left by the waxes. Once cooled, the pieces are cut from the tree, sandblasted to remove any bits of plaster and returned to us.

Student's cast pieces from one of our 6 week blocks.

Step 4: Metal Clean Up

That's you again. Your metal piece has a sandblasted texture all over, plus a sprue coming out of it where it was attached to the casting tree. You will need to cut/file off the sprue and sand your piece smooth - unless you like the sandblasted texture!

Tips for Successful Lost Wax Casting

To elevate your lost wax casting experience, keep these tips in mind:

• Practice Patience: Take your time with each stage of the process. Rushing can lead to mistakes and less satisfactory results.

• Experiment with Designs: Embrace new shapes, materials and techniques. The flexibility of lost wax casting allows for a broad network of creative expression.

  
  

• Make notes: It sounds obvious, but recording your steps, measurements, things you've tried can really help in your jewellery journey.

  
  

• Learn from Mistakes: Challenges are a part of the learning process. Reflecting on setbacks is key to improving your skills.

  
  

Hard wax snakes in progress