Podcast: Play in new window
This week we welcome Emi Blaser to talk about metal-casting in historical and contemporary context for writers to use in historical or fantasy settings.
Hurstwic Viking iron smelting: http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm
Haunted scrambled eggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHkMSHbdSJU
Emi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ivorivet
Emi on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ivorivet
Emi on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr98SjSqK7pxkSf2MYZhxA
Video (from Twitch and YouTube):
<p>Writing is only part of a writing career -- no one warned us that we would need business acumen and entrepreneurship to be an author. Whether you're traditionally published or an independent self-publisher, it's good to have a leg up on accounting, marketing, time management, and other key skills.</p><br><p>These recordings of live discussion on craft and development, on business best practices, on explorations of fascinating and inspiring real life cool stuff, and more will help you along your writing journey and career development. Join Laura VanArendonk Baugh as she shares what she's learned and what she's learning. (Or join the weekly live discussion with your own questions!)</p><br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>
Transcript:
Metal-Casting! a Learn With Me for writers and creators – powered by Happy Scribe
We’ve got sound.Let’s try this again.
Hi, everybody, it’s Tuesday,this is To Write And Have Written.
I’m Laura VanArendonk Baugh.
And what you didn’t hear me say was that Ihad made some changes on this local
machine and set myself upfor some technical difficulties.
And yeah, apparently nosound was one of them.
So welcome, everybody.Let’s go ahead.
Just again, we’re going to start with ourQuitter’s Day Achievement Party.
We’re actually goingto do that first tonight.
January the 19th isunofficially Quitter’s Day.
Apparently, statistically,
that’s the day people tend to fall off thewagon on their New Year’s resolutions.
But we made resolutions two weeks ago.
Resolutions is completely the wrong word.
We actually worked out goals and
doable plans to work toward those goals.
So there’s a whole episodeon that, do that separately.
But I asked people to state goals.
And if we are still on the wagon as
of today, then I have prizes and we’rehaving our achievement party.
So hooray, I’m glad everybody’s here.
And now you can hear me, so awesome.
So very quickly,
If you posted your goals on mysocial media link that I asked for,
then go ahead and throw into the chatwhere you are with that.
And then, you know, we’re notgoing to, there is no shaming here.
Like if you’re making progress.Great.
Nobody was supposed to be there yet.We’re just,
are you are you still on the wagon?That’s what we’re after.
Yes.On the wagon.
Thank you, ShyRedFox.Awesome.
And just a reminder,
ShyRedFox is going to be doing a bonusepisode with me tomorrow night.
Some more information on that later.
So it’s so awesome, guys.
And then what I have here,let me pull out.
Writers love notebooks, we collect them,we don’t write in them.
That is what — they are justfor looking, not for using. So.
Oh, Joe, you got 500 words a day and youmanaged 400 even with the weekends off.
Sweet.Nice.
Anyway, so this shiny, shiny
Leuchtturm 1917 notebook,these are, this is a lined notebook.
These go for like 20 bucks.These are nice notebooks.
So we’re going to raffle one of these off.
You can get it delivered to you
germ free and everything,and then you can hold it and never open it
and never, ever, ever writein it because we don’t.
All right,
Bridger’s within parameters,you hope to be doing better.
That’s OK.You’re just the 19th.
You’re statistically ahead.
So we’re good.
Awesome.
And OK.
Alena did not post the goal on socialmedia, but she’s still on the wagon.
That counts.That’s good.
All right.So I’m going to open the raffle.
And if you guys have been
well, I’m going to try to open the raffle.
Coming, coming,
see above re technical difficulties.
There we go, should be working nowso you can put an exclamation mark, raffle,
into the chat and if you are a subscriber,get some bonus tickets there.
Otherwise, everybodygets in just for that.
And we’ll do that in five minutes.Yes.
Bridger says we’re appealing to her loveof having notebooks for having. It’s
for having, not for writing in,just for having.
That’s how that works.
But these are nice.
So, OK,
so while that’s going OK,everybody should be getting raffle and.
Yes.Getting tickets.
I don’t see the ticket.
Is it coming back and tellingyou that you have tickets?
Oh.
Curses on my thing, all right.
So while that’s running, I’m going to — noticket, why is it not giving tickets?
OK, well, Kate got a ticket.It just likes Kate.
OK, maybe it’s just running slow.
OK.
All right, why does it have to happen?
OK, fine, I don’t know.
I have no idea what’s going on.
I’m so sorry, guys.All right.
Let me tell you who’s coming in tonight.
So we have tonight
Emilia Blaser, Dr.
Blaser, but I call her Emi.
I’ve known Emi a longwhile. She is awesome.
I actually met her throughcostuming and cosplay.
She does fantastic and amazing work,
and she is coming in tonight to talk to usabout metal casting, which she’s been.
I’m just going to, like, let her showoff because she just has amazing things.
So awesome things.
ShyRedFox you guys take care of that inthe chat and I’m going to bring Emi in.
So please, everything just work.
And we’re going to hope that wehave a voice from Emi.
Emi, can can you speak to us?
Am I coming through? Is it working?
OK, I’m seeing the soundbar move.I’m just starting to feel like
everything’s tryingto trying to break tonight.
So I’m seeing your sound bar move.
I can hear you.It sounds.
Oh, people can hear you.
This is fantastic, hurray.
Awesome.
So sorry, guys.All right.
I am like that was, that was notsupposed to be that complicated.
You know what?You’re better at Streamlabs
than I am.So yeah.
This is nuts.
It’s all just gnashing of teeth,I think that’s that’s must be the key.
So speaking of gnashing of teeth, so,what do you have for us, Emi?
I mean, yeah, soa little bit about myself.
I met Laura a number of years ago.
It’s getting farther and farther away.
I know Laura before I was in dental schooland now I’m like a full fledged dentist.
So that tells you how longwe’ve known each other.
But I, I do metal castingprimarily as a hobby.
But it was part of my education, for like
learning how to make goldcrowns and stuff like that.
And so I did a littlebit of that in school.
I really liked it and thenkind of revisited it later.
Once I had a proper set up to dothat in a backyard,
that I could set things on fireand without judging people,
that’s always helpful.
And so I’ve been kind of
doing different types of metal casting,probably about three or four different
techniques, depending on how you breakit down for the past two years or so.
And I’d like to to share my my fun stories
and disasters, which I havemultiple, with you guys.
Bridger was just saying everyonedeserves a backyard where
they can set things on fire.
And yes, I think a backyardis judgment free zone.
So one of the things I asked you about is,
you know, like, oh, well,this is a writing channel.
So we’re all writing.
You know, a lot of us, I write angsty epic
fantasy, I know a lot of us are doingmedieval or renaissance or
some historical setting or somefantasy world or something.
And,
you know, most of the stuff,
like if I wanted to look up now,how would I make this thing?
You know, it’s going to be, you know,machine stamping or it’s going to be,
you know, a bunch of stuff that’snot going to apply to my world.
And
so I guess,can you walk us through like the most
first of all, just startwith a super, super basic.
I know metal casting exists.
Do youjust take metal and then you throw it?
And now I’ve cast it into the thing?You know, how does how does this work?
What is the super, super basic walkthrough?
And then we’ll get into,like, the fun stuff with it.
So
so metal casting is basically,
everybody remembers the the phases ofmatter that you learned in school, of like
water, you know, so youhave a liquid, a solid, gas.
We’re not going to talk about
gas metal because that’s really crazy.And we’re going to bypass the plasma stage.
No, no plasma, no metalplasma tonight, very bad.
But casting metal is basically taking
a solid metal, applying heat until itturns into a liquid, and then pouring it
into whatever shape you want itand allowing it to solidify again.
So I’m hoping that, you know,
there’s some sort of mold orsomething that we have
actually prepared before we hadliquid metal and needed a place to…
Yes.And
there are so many molds.
So kind of to go
more with, like the historical slant,
i also do a little bit ofViking reenacting as well.
So I’m a little bit more familiar with,like Viking Iron Age stuff,
which I think kind of dovetails nicelywith like the fantasy type angle.
But if you’re looking for like
a pre-industrial revolutiontype of mold that you would want to pour
your metal into, it could bemade of a number of things just.
Extremely like dried or baked clay
is is one option,there are soapstone molds that were
basically, if you get a block of soapstone,which is a very, very, very soft stone,
you can actually take a block,cut it in half to have two pieces that are
perfectly likeflat against each other and then carve
a shape into,you know, both halves and then, you know,
give yourself a little pour spoutand sandwich those two together.
That is something that theydid during Viking times.
And not just for Vikings, but many,many Bronze Age cultures.
And, you know,
there are a whole lot of combinationsof like sand and mud and clay
and all of that,just that anything that allows that heat.
Exactly.So it just needs to be strong enough
to not break apart when youpour the metal into it.
And it needs to be ableto withstand the heat.
And sometimes it gets destroyed,sometimes it doesn’t.
It kind of depends on on the typeof casting that you’re doing.
OK, so we’re actually getting questionsabout this in the chat from Bridger.
But I’m gonna interrupt this just one second,since I had so much chaos at the start.
Let me wrap up that raffle and get
that done and then we’ll comeback and we’ll do all the things.
So let me try to see… Joe! Joe, you are a winner.
So that’s awesome.
So if you want to
private message me with a mailing address,
I will ship you a notebook to to hold,not to write in, just to hold.
So congrats.
So send me a mailingaddress for that.
And then anybody who is still on the wagonand showed up tonight, you have your choice
of one, an e-book from my catalogue if there’s something you would like, or two,
if you are a writer and you are moreinterested in getting feedback on your
work, I will do two thousandwords of edits for you.
But you must be present to win.
So sorry if you’re hearing this
on the podcast later orcatching on YouTube later.
I’m sorry.It’s not open to everyone forever.
Must be here tonight on the stream,
so I have to have seen you in the chat. So.And then thank you guys for letting me be
disjointed and come back and takecare of the achievement party there.
And now back to Emi.Absolutely.
Bridger was asking about, you know,
the molds withstanding the heatand then how how do you demold.
So yeah.So depending on what material you’re
using, generally speaking,the soapstone molds are reusable.
You’re going to be pouring metal in there
that doesn’t get super duper hot.
So relatively speaking, so like
you might do a bronze or a pewtercasting or something like that.
But the important part about if you want
to have a reusable mold, you haveto be able to separate the two halves
or just one one thing,
pull the metal casting out of it withouttearing off pieces of your mold.
And so that’s going to dependon the shape of whatever you’re creating.
I actually brought a couple of exampleshere. I realized we were going to be doing.
You want to have somethingcalled a path of draw.
And so that means that you, there is some
orientation that you can take a shape outof your mold or some sort of direction
that you can pull it away from wherenothing is going to lock underneath it.
So if you look at it from that direction,
so I have like a little,this was a cloak pin I made.
It’s got a flat back on one side and thenit’s got some dimension on the other side.
You basically, if you stare at it directly
from this, you can see every singlesurface of this.
There’s nothing that the, you
know, mold is going to have to hookunder and lock it into.
So
this is something that I couldeither cast into an open mold.
So I just basically have likethe impression of this and pour my metal
into it, into the ground and thenjust lift it out when I’m done.
Or I can choose to make it a two part mold
and have like a back covering over it
and then just pull the two halves apartlater when I when I want to get it back.
And so it would actually end uplooking something like this.
This is a casting that wasnot quite perfect.
So I didn’t end up finishing it,but that’s how I chose to
to cast that one.
So, yeah, so I have never done any metal
casting because it frankly scares me.
It’s fun! There’s fire.
I’m sure it looks funand that’s why it scares me.
But yeah, when we do,
Alena and I do the mold makingand casting with resin and silicone.
And so I’ll talk about, if we’re doingthat, that single thing, you
know, the impression kind of thing, youwant no spaces that an ant can hide
from the rain is how I usually tryto describe that to our first time people.
Yeah, yeah.You’re just like that, because you don’t
want any hooks. But you have done likesome really cool, much more complex things
and with multi part pullsand just all kinds of stuff.
So first, just brag.
Just, just, just,
just brag for a second and then we’ll,come back and pick things up.
Oh OK.
So I brought a couple of examplesof like things that I’ve made.
Mostly I do metal castingfor costuming and stuff like that.
So this is, I’ll show you my first costume
project and I’ll showyou my most recent one.
So this is a belt buckle
that I made.
It is made out of zinc and aluminum alloy.
But this is why I wanted to get into it,
not just because I was like,”look at me, I’m so cool.
I can work with metal.”But because when you’re doing costume
work, if you havea belt that you actually want to have,
like hold up your pants,you can’t make the belt buckle out
of resin or something likethat because it’s really going to.
Your pants are goingto come off.
Your pants are going to fall
down, and I speak that from experiencebecause I have definitely had a resin belt
buckle break on me and then had veryloose pants for the rest of the day.
So so I was like, oh,this would be a good project.
It’s a nice, easy shape.
It’s so that was made with sand casting,
which I can tell you what that isin a little bit and how cool that is.
That’s a really beginnerfriendly type of metal making.
And then this coat was another projectthat I made, but it had these little
metal doohickeys here
that all run along the side and these area lot more delicate and refined
and there’s like movingparts and stuff like that.
They’re not rigid.
That’s multiple, multiple pieces going on there.
So they were cast in multiple piecesand then assembled together later.
And I actually useda combination of 3D printing and
castable resin for that,which I can also get into.
So that was like super, super high tech.
And then the sand casting islike super, super low tech.
And there’s a lot of coolstuff in between.
So that just since you can’t see the chat,
the chat is appreciating your workbecause it’s very shiny and very cool.
So the shiny is the most important part.Yeah.
So you mentioned super, super briefly likethat what metal you were using there.
But you know what? What are our metal
options for doing this? Can Ijust grab any old pot metal?
Can I melt down a pot
and make this happen, you know?How does this need to happen?
Probably not.So.
So generally speaking,
if you were trying to do this in modernday, it’s it’s best to go with some kind
of casting grain or like some kind ofblock that’s uniform of of the metal.
So a lot of people
kind of choose aluminum as oneof the first metals that they want
to mess around with becauseit’s relatively easy to melt.
It has a pretty low melting temperaturecompared to a lot of other metals.
But people get the idea of, oh, well,I’m just going to melt down a bunch
of these pop cans because, like,I drink a lot of soda and,
you know, people recycle aluminum and why
can’t I just melt the all these cansinto something cool? Which that–
you asked me to talk about disasters so
that you, generally speaking, want tohave a pretty pure source of your metal.
You don’t want to have a lot of
dye or plastic accompanying it orlike dried up little soda dregs.
So any anything that’s going to
introduce impurities into your metal,you know, just from a
“am I going to get a goodcasting out of it” perspective…
Like, absolutely.
You want to minimize the numberof imperfections that you have in your
metal, but also from a safety perspective,if you get like a bunch of really weird
gross stuff in there, dependingon what you grab to melt down,
it could be unsafe.
Like you could create vaporsthat are unsafe to inhale.
You can if there’s any water left in yourpop can when you try to melt it down,
water turns to steam and steam isa whole lot bigger than water.
So it can create splashes of metal.
Yeah, yeah.It’s not not a good idea.
So like, generally speaking,if you want to get into, like, aluminum,
you know, get like automotive partsthat you can chop down.
But I have seen so many movies where our heroesjust run around and grab everything
metallic and throw it into a potand then forge like an epic sword.
Like, that’s how that works, right?
I guess you can forge an epic letteropener that way. That would be really…
Yeah.All right.
So I’ll keep that for my epic letter-opening scenes.
I’ve got one of those coming up.
I’ll make sure and grab that.So.
Yeah, yeah.
So we’ve got the chat now.
I’m curious what happenedwith the soda cans.
So we’ll see how it works.
Well, I was… I have never I personallytried to melt down a soda can because
my metallurgist father was like,don’t don’t do that here.
Here’s some automotive stock.
So
Alena is pointing out that the soda cans
would work in video game crafting.That’s true, absolutely.
Yeah. There we go.All right.
So.
With all that, if I’mwriting a world where I want this
to be a thing, what needs to bein my world? You know, what stage of
development, I guess,what technology do what does my character
need to have access to in order to bereally, you know, able to reliably cast
something and have it getbeyond letter opener status?
So generally speaking,
I mean, if you go back and do
either research on bronze Bronze Agecultures or Iron Age cultures,
the minimum that you’re going to needis going to be one of those.
And so it’s going to kind of depend onwhat metals you want to work with.
So in the Bronze Age and the reason whythose were primarily differentiated
from each other is that iron has a muchhigher melting temperature than bronze.
Iron tends to be stronger.
It can be forged, meaning that you can
do all sorts of stuff where like,
you know, your typical blacksmith shopwhere you’re taking a bar of iron
and you’re smashing it into like a long,skinny shape and then folding it over
again and smashing it again and folding itover and basically changing the structure
of the metal and the waythat the the crystals in the metal are
arranged to create a reallystrong and resilient metal.
So there are definitely, you know,if you’re going back all the way
to Bronze Age culture where they didn’thave iron to make swords out of,
there are definitely likebronze swords that were cast.
But the big technology advance was
that iron was a lot more,was a lot harder and more resilient.
And you could make more durable tools
that, you know, just kind of beatthe pants off of the bronze ones.
So
generally speaking, you know,you need some kind of source of clay
or mold making material or the soapstoneor, you know, what what have you.
You need fireand a way to contain it so that you can
create the temperatures requiredfor working with the metal.
And you’re also going to need tools to
to not set yourself on fire or burn yourhands or other other types of stuff.
So all of that,depending on which cultures you’re looking
at, there are some prettycreative ways around that.
And we’re now passing
into the territory of Laura knowsjust enough to sound stupid.
But,you know, I know that this is not
something where I can just put my potfulof metal chunks on my campfire and it’s
going to turn into niceusable liquid metal.
So what are we talking about that, what
kinds of furnaces would benecessary to make this happen?
Obviously, it’s going to vary somewhatwith what metal we’re melting.
But yes.
What what give me give me a range,maybe a concept here.
So actually, I have I brought this
in because I thought we mightbe talking about this today.
I have the furnace that I liketo use in my backyard.
I’m going to sit it on my lap hereand hopefully I can hold it up.
And adjust it,
so I don’t know how good this picture is,
but basically you it’s goingto be a closed container.
So this here has a lid,the metal and stuff goes inside.
And the key feature of any furnace where
you want it to get really,really hot is it’s going to be mostly
enclosed, but it’s going to have a holein the top that air can escape from.
You’re going to have some kind of air
inlet at the bottom that isgoing to feed oxygen to the fire.
And generally speaking,your heat source is going to be
the hottest at the bottom and thenthe temperature is going to go down as you
get closer to the the airexhaust at the top.
So,
you know, I have in my backyard.
I’ve got a crucible which is made out
of graphite that sits in thereand actually contains the molten metal.
But I was actually just reading up on
Viking Iron Age smeltinglast night, just to kind of brush
myself up on things, and they made these things out of
stacks of sod where you would take just
a square of sod, put it on the ground,cut a hole in it, line that layer
with clay, put another layer of sod, cutanother hole in and create like this this
funnel of of clay lined
sod basically with like a little outlet atthe bottom and a little hole at the top.
And like that’s what they would useto smelt iron in some cultures.
So, you know, but the basic anatomyof a furnace is the same is that you have
your air inlet, you have your chamber,and you have your exhaust at the top.
OK,
so we’re getting questions in the chat,but you’re doing a fantastic job of as
the questions come up, you’removing on and answering them.
So, so lovely.Keep that up.
It’s really good.
So
I have no idea now, I gotdistracted by the chat.
Let me check my notes.What else did I want to ask you?
Oh.
So.
We talked about, one thing I want to hit isjust common misconceptions about,
you know, I mentioned earlier,like I can just grab jewelry
and pop cans and whatever and throwthem in and make a thing.
What are the other things that — you know,we all have the experience that we’re
watching a movie or reading a book, andwe’re like, are you freaking kidding me?
Did you even Wikipedia?
And so what are the things that whenyou’re watching a movie or reading
that immediately leap out to you, so wecan make notes on how to avoid that?
Oh, gosh, I’m
I’m trying to…
so I think the biggest thing that
really pulls me out of my suspensionof disbelief is the time involved.
So
the casting metal and smelting metaland all that other stuff,
like especially if you’re doing itin a pre-industrial revolution setting,
is not like a quick, snappy thing.
Like when I do it in my backyard,it usually takes several hours if I’m just casting,
if I’m just pouring the metalinto a mold I’ve already prepared.
But like if I’m doing something like
a lost wax casting,which I can get into a little bit,
if you want me to talk about that,like the burnout involved
in that sometimes takes eight or10 hours or it can take overnight.
So,
you know, you see like those cool moviemontages where,
you know, they’re like hammering and likepouring metal and stuff like that.
And then like two minutes later,they have like a finished piece
and it’s like and, you know,it’s like a ring that goes on the person’s
finger and it’s like, oh, yes,this is the ring of power.
So, you know, whatever.
The other thing is that when when you geta fresh casting,
it’s going to it’s going to look gross,like it’s not going to be shiny.
My light is like making thislook shinier than it actually is.
This is like a matte finish.
It hasn’t been polished.
It still has the sprue attached to it.
If you’re, you know,
doing something that is like a highertemperature melting alloy–
Jumping in real fast,
Sprue is one of those vocab termsthat not everybody is going to have.
So sorry.
The sprue is basicallythe part that you,
the neck that you,it’s your pour spout, it’s what’s what
has a whole bunch of extra metal left
in it that you will cut offonce you have your finished product.
But, you know, there’sa whole bunch of extras stuff.
It doesn’t actually just go in and come out
in a perfect finish.Exactly.
And there’s a whole bunch of like sandingand polishing and like
sandpaper and buffing wheels and allsorts of..
We never get the sandpaper montage.
Yeah, that never shows up.
I know just like, if your jeweler’s justlike sitting there for two hours,
just sandpapering everything before theytake it over to the polishing wheel.
So.Yeah.
all right.Well, let me let me guess.
We’re getting some reallygood questions in the chat.
Let me run through those quickly.
And catch up to where youdidn’t answer in the thing.
So when you’ve got something likethat sod furnace and you’ve got your
crucible in the middlefull of hot hot metal,
now you want to pour it into something,how is it portable?
What are you using to move that?
Or
do you just as
Bridger said, you just poke the mold underit and hope gravity works the right way.
You know, how does how do you how isthis happening? How do we do this?
So so with the sod furnace specifically,
the purpose of that furnace wasto smelt iron, which means that you’re
taking iron ore, which isiron, usually some kind of iron oxide or
iron that has a lot of impuritiesin it and converting it to a
more chemically pure iron, so you’re not…
The goal is not to actually make a shapeout of it, it’s to change the composition
of the metal so it doesn’t necessarilymatter what shape it ends up being in.
So basically, with the sod furnace,what they would be doing is chucking in.
You know, they they get the furnace going,
they chuck in iron ore,then charcoal and iron ore than charcoal
and basically, like, just burn it all dayto cause the iron to–
it’s a reduction reaction if youguys are familiar with that or not.
And that’s a day or days plural.Yes.
Isn’t it.Yeah.
Like a long while.
And so the the end result is that you havethis like just this blob of metallic iron
at the bottom of your furnacewhen you’re all done.
And I watched this one reenactment group,
like, kind of be like,OK, well, we’re done now.
We got to get the iron out.
And they literally just took this big logand just jammed it in the top
of the furnace to, like, knock offall the extra metal from the walls.
And so they basically just pound it down
and then, like, let itlet it die out, you know?
So it’s it’s safe enoughto reach in there.
And then they pull outthis thing called a bloom,
like a flower.
And you have this chunk of metal whichfor iron specifically,
you wouldn’t actually want to completelymelt that down to a liquid again.
You would take it to like a blacksmithingtype thing where you just heat it up hot
enough to make it malleable,but it would still be solid.
And so, yeah, you basically just like let
that go and then tear apart the furnaceand grab your chunk of metal out of it.
And then, sorry guys in the chat,I’m going to jump around and try to take
these questions in what appearsto me to be a functional order.
I could be wrong.
So then you’ve got your chunks of metal or
you’ve got your your sprueoff your finished piece.
What are you using to cut those?
Usually either saws or I will sometimes
use a Dremel tool or a rotarytool for small things.
But
I’ve honestly found that just using aregular handsaw is a lot more efficient.
And depending on on the size of the piece
and what you’re trying to cut off,it’s literally just like
a handsaw from the the hardware store orthere are very, very small jewelry saws
that have very,very skinny blades that allow you to get
navigate curves reallywell and stuff like that.
So, OK,I’m going to share Bridger’s response
to because she was talking about,she had asked about the transporting
the hot metal and she said “I was imaginingsomeone carrying like a barrel sized chunk
of sod with melting metal in itlike a lava cake over to a mold.
And I knew that had to be extremely wrong.”
I loved the lava cake in there.
So if you have, it was actually extremely
interestingthat this group that did it, they’re called
Hurstwic. I can send you a link totheir little write up that they did on it.
It’s very interesting reading.
Yeah, I can put that out later.Yeah.
Yeah.
And then can you talk aboutthe lost wax because
people are asking about that.
Exactly.So lost wax is really great
if you want to make something that’s verydetailed or
a shape that doesn’t necessarily conformto a path of draw, you know, requirement.
So
the the nice thing is that you can makereally complicated shapes like, you know,
big fancy bronze statuesof like a dude on a horse.
And, you know, it’s got legs and
everything poking out everywhere.Excuse me.
Pardon me.
Getting excited about like horse statues.
But the downside is that the mold that you
use basically gets destroyedduring the process.
So it’s a one off thing.
And so it’s called lost wax becausethe original pattern that you use to
eventually inform the shape of the finalmetal piece, you sculpt it in wax first,
then you take that and then you
put it into like a special type of plaster
called investmentor basically anything that is going to be
heat resistant enough to to handlethe temperature changes and all
the physics stuff that’s going on whenyou pour molten metal into it.
But the whole process works becausewax melts at a certain temperature.
So you’ve got this this wax sculpture thathas been coated in this special plaster.
You stick it in an oven or,you know, some kind of heat source.
And eventually the wax heats up enough
that it liquefies and pours outof the mold and sometimes even vaporizes.
So you have left in the plaster this
hole that is perfectly shaped likewhatever you want to make out of metal.
And so that’s why it’s called lost wax,
because the wax patternis lost in the process.
You destroy it intentionally to makeroom for that metal to be poured in.
So then basically you have your
your prepared mold and then you heat up
your metal, you pour it in and hopefullyeverything turns out well.
There are a whole bunch of different
techniques that you have.And if it doesn’t, you have to start from scratch.
Yeah.
And if it doesn’t, you’vegot to start over again.
And I’ve never,ever messed anything up ever.
And I’ve always had all of my castingssucceed and they’re perfect and beautiful.
Well, well, everything isperfect and beautiful.
You mentioned the sand casting is a little
bit easier, so let’s justassume it’ll be perfect.
Talk to us about sand casting.
So sand casting is really fun.
That’s actually, if you’re looking to get
into hobby casting,that’s what I would recommend.
So I actually have a coupleof visual aids for that, too.
So you have something
in sand casting.
The main mold material is a particulartype of sand that has like
a certain amount of clay in itand a certain amount of like, you know,
oil or water or dependingon which type of sand you using.
It’s basically like the best sandcastle sand you could possibly imagine.
Like, it just it sticks together.
It holds exactly the shapethat you want it to hold.
You know, you could grab it in your hand
and it would exactly like pick up the pattern of all the lines on your hand.
Like, that’s that’s the type of sandthat we’re we’re imagining here.
So you you have that sand and youhave some kind of container.
This is called a flask inmetal casting terms.
And a flask is basically just anything
that provides an outer structurefor your own material.
Not like a drinking flask,but a casting flask.
So in sand casting, this actuallyhas two halves that pull apart.
And I’m going to hold them up
to the screen here and hope that Idon’t fall off the edge of the picture.
But
there’s one side that has no pegs on it
and then another sidethat has two pegs in it.
So they both index together like that.
And then there’s even a little convenient
pour spout if you choose to have your spout come out that way.
But what you do is you basicallyhave your your flat pattern.
You usually have to have it dividedinto two parts along a parting line.
So which is basically like the noants hiding in the rain type thing.
And so you put this piece on a flatsurface, you take this,
you put it down around it to kindof act like a fence for the sand.
And then you have a big, big malletthat you use to pound the sand into it.
Then you pick it up.
Your pattern is stuck
in the sand and you basically either leaveit in if you’re doing a two part mold or
you can pry it out if you’redoing a like a flat backed thing.
And, you know, that creates the void where
you’re going to pourthe molten metal into.
So depending on which which type of shape
you’re making, like there there area couple different refinements,
but basically the really cool thingabout sand casting is that unlike lost wax
casting, you know, at the end you’releft with sand that you can reuse.
So it’s super beginner friendly.
I have done like multiple sand castingson a weekend where I’ve done like seven or
eight of them,as opposed to when I do lost wax.
I have to wait eight hoursfor one mold to burn out.
So it’s a lot more frustratingif it goes wrong.
So if we have to get this amulet cast before the Dark Lord arrives like in 20 minutes,
we’re going with the sand casting.OK.
So.
I saw you talk about metal castinglast May actually and
you were talking about pouring it
and I had never even thought of this,but it made perfect sense.
You’re talking about the metalstarts to cool as you’re pouring.
And so you have to make sure that it’s
going to stay liquid enoughto get all the way to the bottom.
So, yes, about that a little bit, because
that sounds like a wayfor things to go terribly wrong.
Oh, yeah.
So it it’s not a very, like, visuallyspectacular way of things going wrong.
But if you do want to have your your metalsmith just curse and be in a bad mood
for the rest of the day, like, that’sdefinitely a wrong thing that happens.
So getting
again, you’re working with a liquidthat has a very, very high freezing point
that’s several hundred degrees abovethe atmosphere that we are occupying.
So,you know, if you you put all this work
into heating up the metal and getting itto a certain temperature,
you don’t just want to have it geta little bit past its melting point.
You actually want to raiseit a little bit beyond that.
So as it starts losing heat,
once you take the fire off of it,it’s going to stay liquid long enough
that it gets to the inside of your moldand fills in all those little nooks
and crannies before it losesenough heat to become a solid.
So I have had
tons of casts not turn out well becausethe metal has prematurely frozen.
And it’s just so disappointing,especially when you’re doing a lost wax
thing, because that’s likeeight or 10 hours of work
that’s just down the drain.
There are tools in an industrial
setting that allow you to really, like,control the temperature very well.
So you don’t have those types of issues.
But like, if you’re, you know,
writing for a world that doesn’t havethermometers or like IR thermometers,
then,you know, you’re just kind of going off
the expertise of the personwho’s doing the melting, which
can, you know, be very sad sometimesbecause I’ve definitely been like,
“is it done yet? Is it done yet?
I think it’s done,” and that it hasn’tbeen done. Like baking cookies,
but with cookies,at least you could keep going.
Or you can you can eat the dough.But this is,
yeah, you can still eat the dough.
So the question in the chat is, can you reuse that metal?
Or is it contaminatedand not reusable at that point?
So depending on the type of metal,if you don’t introduce too many
impurities, then you candefinitely reuse it.
So for for like the zincand aluminum alloy stuff, I have
messed up and remelted these so often.
It’s not great long termfor the life of the metal,
especially if it’s an alloy, meaning thatit’s a mixture of two elemental metals.
So like this one is a mixof zinc and aluminum.
Bronze is a mix of copper and tin.
Brass is a mix of copperand zinc, I think.
But both of those metalsor you can have more than two metals
in an alloy, will have different meltingpoints, kind of like within the metals.
So if you cast and recast a metal,quite often what you can do is make it
what’s called off composition,where the original metal might have been
like 60 percent copperand 40 percent zinc.
But zinc has a lower boiling point thancopper does.
So if you cast and remelt it a whole bunch,
you’ll actually lose more of the zincevery time you you heat it up.
So then,
your metal properties might startchanging if you cast it a whole lot.
So that’s really good to know.
Yeah, OK,
so ShyRedFox is asking about smiths using
the color of the metal, looking at itin the dark to judge the state of it,
ShyRedFox is also in somereenactments, so.
Yeah.
So is that something that would have been,that would also apply to, you know, this?
Absolutely.Yeah, OK.
I’ve heard, like when I was on Twittercomplaining about how I
was having casting mishaps, Iam mutuals with somebody who actually
works at a casting houseand she’s like, oh yeah.
You know, you you probably froze it there.
And she’s just like, yeah,
I usually just kind of like,wait until it does this, this and this.
And like there are certain properties,
like it ripples in a certainway or it turns a certain color
that I, I don’t haveintimate experience of.
But people who do this for a living
of visually identify.Experience matters.
Yeah, absolutely.All right.
Yeah.So Alena is asking about,
you know, she had done lost waxcentrifuge casting previously.
But if for your average hobby caster
at home, is there a way to apply morepressure to force that molten metal
into a more delicate or detailedmold without having a centrifuge?
So there there are multiple ways that youcan try to force metal into a mold.
Centrifuging itis one and I have,
it’s called a casting arm in some circles.
So that’s what I’m used to calling it.
I have used a casting arm before.That’s really good for like small jewelry
type stuff like like ringsand pendants and things like that.
But your other two big ones that that I’maware of are, number one is gravity,
and that’s going to be your mosthistorically accurate and simple to do.
Everybody’s got that.
Everybody has gravity.
And a lot of that when you’re usinggravity to try to force metal
into a particular things,into particular shapes,
a lot of that is going to have to dowith your mold design as well.
So
one of the reasons why I can cast
something like this,which generally speaking has
pretty skinny areas where the metalcan freeze pretty easily,
is that I have this giant reservoirof metal in the form of the spruce.
So as
you want to design your shape suchthat not only are you thinking about
the final jewelry piece that you wantto make after you cut all the extra stuff
off, but you actually wantto set it up with enough
supply of molten metal to allow all
of the extremities to to get filledbefore this starts to freeze.
So, for example, if I was having a lot
of issues with casting this shape,what I might want to do is
increase the height of my sprue sothat when I’m pouring the metal in there,
instead of having one inch worthof the weight of metal on top of it,
I have three or four inches of metalpushing down and forcing, you know,
the metal to go into the bottomof the mold where my my pattern is
the other way that I have
that a lot of, like,
post-industrial revolution casting housesdo it now is vacuum casting where the
it’s not really done in sand casting,but in lost wax casting the
the investment or the special plasterthat they use as a as a mold.
If you look at it under a microscope,it’s not a solid block.
It actually has little tiny paths for airto get to, to kind of permeate through
that and escape because, you know,if you’re trying to pour metal into a hole
that’s filled with air,the air has to go somewhere.
Otherwise you’re going to have bubbles.
So one thing that casters will do
to help evacuate the airfrom the the mold is to
have, they have very fancy systems setup where
there are pumps that will actually drawa vacuum on the bottom of the casting
to basically suck the air outand create like a direction of flow.
And I’ve kind of set up a very,very low tech version of that with like
a a resin degassing pot that haslike a hole drilled in it.
That you can see a difference.
It’s really cool because if,you pour your metal in and then
you turn your vacuum pump on and it’s
pulling a vacuum at the bottomof the thing to try and draw the metal
into the mold more, and you’ll actually beable to see this little molten metal just
kind of go in like get suckeddown just a little bit more.
Once you turn that vacuum pump on.It’s pretty cool.
That’s cool.
So question is, can you cast in stages? Doyou have to do the whole cast in one go?
If you do stages, do you getproblems where the layers join?
I think generally speaking,you want to cast all in one go there.
i’ve read a lot of books,
and I am certainly not an exhaustiveexpert on this, so I’m sure that there are
people who will will cast,you know, multiple times.
But generally speaking,you’re going to have
like expansion and contraction and like,weird dimensional stuff happen
at the layer joints because metalwill shrink very slightly
when it’s turning from a liquidinto a solid, it will contract.
So, you know, you might not you might havelike a visible layer or
delamination problems between the twolayers if you’re trying to do that.
I do know that there are sometechniques out there where if you want
to make a casting that hasmultiple different metals in it,
there are some some people who will do
projects where they they casta shape out of whatever higher
temperature, melting,temperature, metal they’re using.
Finish that up and then stick it back
into a mold and pour a second lowermelting point metal around it to kind
of act as the second fillerfor whatever shape they want.
But you’re going from highest temperature
to lowest temperature and it’skind of done on purpose.
I don’t really think that you do likemultiple layers of the same metal.
OK.OK, so
OK,another question, how hard is it to make
something with a hingepart like the belt buckle?
You have to plan ahead to to makesomething that has a hinge part,
so like the belt buckleand those those little toggles that I made
on the on the coat,all of those were cast individually.
I suppose somebody who’s really, reallyskilled could probably cast moving pieces
together and then like, break them apart,you know, and have something that’s like
links, like you could probably if you setit up right, have like make a small linked
chain out of using, like,the lost wax process or something.
But by and large,you’re going to be casting those
those pieces individuallyand then joining them together later once
you’ve done all of yourfinishing and polishing.
OK,
and then, guys, if anybody has any other
questions remaining, throw them in thechat now and then I’m going to ask Emi.
So we talked aboutsmall ways things can go wrong.
We know that water will causesome thrown metal.
What is there another way we can havesomething go spectacularly wrong?
So apart from explosions,
you know, never rule out explosions,explosions, I mean, explosions are fine,
especially if you’re using likegas or something like that.
But I will say for the lower temperature
metals, probably the mostdramatic like, “oh, that’s not right”
moment that I’ve had whenI’ve been doing casting is
you can overheat metaland it won’t get to the point where it
it turns into a gas becausethat’s kind of crazy.
But you can
you can create issues where the metal gets
hot enough that enough of it aerosolizedis that, you know,
there are fumes that are createdthat you don’t want to breathe in.
So, you know, you could give yourself
yourself or your characterslike lung issues.
But the the worst thing that I’ve ever had
happened was I was trying to melta zinc aluminum alloy always outside.
And I got it probably like six or seven
hundred degrees higher than I should havebecause I just wasn’t really watching
my furnace and I was puttinga lot of gas through it.
And
you can actually, if you heat metals upto a certain point, they will
they’re going to be in such an excitedstate on a molecular level
that once you open the lid to yourfurnace and all of that, you know,
to kind of pick up the crucible and godo what you want to do with it,
you suddenly have an influxof oxygen coming in and
your metal can start reacting with thatoxygen in very weird and funky ways.
And so in my backyard,I learned that if you overheat zinc
and aluminumand then you open the top to your furnace,
you get something that looks likehaunted scrambled eggs.
It looked like a witch’s cauldron
that was just like spontaneously formingthis, like web, like bright yellow
spider web stuff that just spontaneouslyformed on the surface of my metal.
And I was just like, what is happening?
And I started trying to scoop it out.
And it was likethe consistency of packing peanuts.
And I just kept scooping it out and liketrying to get it off and like throwing it
on the ground and justmore kept springing up.
And I was like, oh, my God,what is going on?
So you can
heat metals up to the point that reallyfunky stuff happens to them sometimes if
you’re not controllingthe environment carefully.
I remember when you were tweetingthe haunted scrambled eggs picture.
Yeah.It was like,
“yeah, that’s not, I don’t think that’s, Idon’t know much about this,
but I don’t think that’s what it’ssupposed to look like, you know.”
Yeah.
Alena is putting in, investment is a super
fine plaster dust that’svery bad to breathe.
So that’s something to be aware of.
And Bridger asked, does this process have
a noticeable smell or is it just firesmells? So give us some sensory details.
I guess
there definitely aredistinct smells, depending on the
the metal that you’re working with.
If you get it like to that superheatedstate where it’s super reactive and you
start like weird fumes and stuff,it smells very bad.
It’s it’s hard to describe, but like verythankful that I was outside for that one.
I don’t think that
when everything goes right,I have not noticed a distinctive smell.
I have been in blacksmithing situationswhere, like the inside of the blacksmith
shop, it just, you know,it’s like charcoal.
They’re just burning a lot of, you know,
charcoal and and coal and stuff like that.
And there are so so thosetypes of of smells.
But the really weird,
funky stuff doesn’t doesn’t happen in ashop where you know what you’re doing.
So my experienced character coulddefinitely walk in and be like, oh,
you overheated some, you know,kind of thing because
that was such a distinctive smell.Yeah.
I mean, that was like one alloy
that doesn’t have a lotof a lot of historical use.
A lot of people don’t really recommend
casting zinc for that reason becauseit can do that easily, apparently.
But that’s what I had on hand.
So that’s what I used.
Sure.
And then continuing, what are sometypical minor,
maybe painful inconveniences like,you know, the stubbing a toe equivalent
that a character could be grumblingabout even if they weren’t on fire.
So I would probably sayminor casting defects.
So, like,you could have your character
complain about a void ora bubble or a fold is another one.
So sometimes if you have
you know, everybody knowswith bubbles and stuff.
Ah, but you can get folds on the back ofmetal pieces where the metal wasn’t quite
hot enough to really getall the way through.
It’s not quite frozen,but it’s starting to form a cold edge as
it’s filling out the last little bit
of a shape so you can getlike almost like little
river lines on on the back of something.That’s called a fold.
That’s just a sign that the metalwasn’t quite hot enough.
You can get very small features like like
say you’re trying to casta ring or something like that.
And most of the the shape will cast.
But then the very fine details.
Maybe the metal wasn’t hot enough to get
into, like, the little prongsthat are holding the gem on.
I’m gonna interrupt you for just onesecond, we just got raided.
So.Oh, hey, welcome Raiders.
We are in the middle of chatting with Emi
here about metal casting and specificallywhat we can take to get that right
in our historical or fantasyworld or anything.
So welcome, everybody.Yeah.
So hello.
And and yeah, if you have anyquestions about metal casting,
jump on in.
Yeah, so and so sorry, Emi,I will let you finish and thenI
have another questionthat was in the chat.
Oh, that’s OK.
So I think mostly just what Ithe really like,
“oh, my gosh.
Oh, no, I’m actually disappointed”
thing is, is you you get a castand it it looks good.
You think it’s good,it’s covered and stuff, but
it’s mostly there.
And then you start cleaning it up and you
find like, oh there’s a bubble or ohthat didn’t cast or oh that’s not good.
So that would definitely have your,
your character grumbling a little bitthat it looks nice at first and then they
upon closer inspection,disappointment awaits.
We have a request if you can
link to a photo of the haunted scrambled eggs.
I definitely have a video I can link
to you guys, I can send it to you and youcan put it in the show notes if you want.
But it looks very strange.
So if I am pouring my liquefied metal
into my mold and I know I need to havethat small stream to allow the air
to escape because air takes up space,but I pour a little too quickly and it globs.
And now I think there’s a chance that I’ve
caught some air in the bottomand made a bubble.
Is there anything I can do about that?
Do I just make a lot of noiseand stomp off to find chocolate?
How do we fix this?
The speed of pouring
isn’t really going to affect that so much.
I mean,
the metal is very, very heavyand air is very, very light.
So.Yeah, you can tell I’m coming at this
from a resin and silicone areawhere the bubbles are a big deal.
So it’s really interestingthat kind of there are some things
that track really well from from resincasting into metal casting.
And then there are some things that arethe complete opposite,
like, you know, how in certain resins,if you have a very, very thick part,
the reaction can get going so muchthat it creates a lot of heat in there.
And you can have a lot of issues with it,
you know, bubbling or doingweird things in thick parts.
While a lot of the problem spots in metal
casting are the exact opposite,They’re all the tiny bits.
But sorry, I’m losing my train of thought.
What was your question?
No, that was it. Like,
if there is a bubble or a void,is there is there anything I can do about
it or am I just like,start carving some new wax?
Honestly just start over. Because Imean, you’re not–
if you reach out and you’re like,oh, what if I just do this one?
That’s a great way for your character
to have very blistered hands,which I have also.
There’s been situations where,
“you know, well,oh, I’m not sure if that went in all
the way? Maybe what if I just nudgedthe crucible a little bit just to just
to vibrate a little bit to seeif I can shake it down in there” and then
like, the metal just spillsover the side of the crucible.
Or I like I knocked the two halvesout of alignment or something.
And now I have like a shape that was
supposed to be like this and nowthe halves are like that.
So it’s better to just
like pour and pray.
And then just once it’s poured,
you just got to let it cooloff and hope for the best.
OK, and then a question aboutflame painted copper, is that
something that is–
so I’m going to go backin and get back to the…
Oh yes.
Oh,I think
that was a question aboutthe joins with multiple casts.
But Bridger, if I did that questionwrong, you can correct me in the chat.
So I think so.
I’ve definitely
I’ve seen that before where I thinkthey’re referring to like the different
colors of copper dependingon the heat that’s applied.
I, I’m not super duper familiar with that,
but I think it has to do withcertain oxidation products being formed
on the surface of the copper, dependingon how much heat you’re playing.
So you can get a really like beautiful
rainbow of colors depending on howyou heat treat your copper.
I remember making like a hammered copper
tray when I was very small with my dad,where the final step was to heat treat it,
which made a lot of reallycool colors appear.
But I think that’s where we’re going.
That’s something that happensa little bit after the casting because
it’s done basically juston the surface of the metal.
It doesn’t involve reheatmelting it or anything like that.
OK,sorry, I’m catching up with listening
to you and catching up with the chatat the same time. DM Stretch says
he had done some welding and oneof the things that went wrong was he dipped
the metal in the quenching trough,but not deep enough.
So the hot water shot up his arm.
Oh, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he dunked his whole arm andjust got wet but cooled off.
So that’s good.But yeah.
Quenching, you know, we were talking aboutmisconceptions and this is,
this is one that thankfully Idon’t see as often anymore.
I don’t know if it’s because people gotwise or it just became cliché,
but the whole you know,”I have to quench this sword in blood!”
Or “I have to quench the sword in the bellyof a living human!” You know, whatever.
And, guys, just don’t, we don’t.
That’s not how quenching works.
OK, yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.Note, so I’ve seen water quenches
and sometimes depending on what,what the properties of the metal you’re
using, you can also sometimesquench in oil as well.
And depending on what oil you’re using,it’ll usually have like a higher
boiling point then than water.
So I’m not exactly sureof the physics of that.
But you if you’re setting up your yourblacksmith shop,
you might have a container of oilfor quenching in there as well.
Yeah.Yeah.
So
DM Stretch in is in the chatand he’s like, yeah, water and
oil for quenching.And then he called jinx on you.
So sorry.Yeah.
So Bridger says wehave deep fried swords.
This is great.I love my chat, this is how we go.
So I guess, really quickly quenchingversus letting it just naturally cool.
And I know we’re talking aboutdifferent processes here.
Oh yay.
I love when Emi, getsthat face, guys, buckle up.
It’s going to be awesome.
OK,
so
I’m going to try to to explainthis in as plain terms as I can.
But the quenching versus
the allowing it to cool naturallyhas a lot to do with controlling what kind
of crystalline structureyou want the metal to have.
So if you imagine
the liquid metal, kind of like water
and then cooling down into a solid, likeice, you can have a bunch of little
individual ice crystals that are verysmall and kind of you know,
if you looked at it under a microscope,it would look very variegated and,
you know, very like saltand pepper type texture.
Or you can have a very big uniform block
of ice where all of the, you know,water molecules are oriented in the exact
same way and the exactsame crystal structure.
Metal does a very similar thing wheredepending on how fast or slowly you allow
it to cool,it will form itself into either one
very large crystal structure,or it can have a bunch of little points
where it starts cooling all over and youget these these grains that, you know,
if you have a whole bunch starting once,they’re eventually going to run into each
other and you’re going to end upwith that same very, very texture.
And that is going to produce a very
different performance based on whatyou want in your metal to do.
So for something like a sword,you want it to be
pretty hard and resistant toto impact and stuff like that.
You want it to be able to hold an edge,whereas something like maybe I’m making
copper wire where I want itto be very ductile and very
easily manipulated.
The single one mono-crystal type stuff isgoing to be a lot more malleable and soft
as opposed to the bunch of littlecrystals all stuck together.
So if you want a big crystal,
you just allow it to cool very,very slowly, which allows that one single
crystal to kind of likeovertake and control the entire, like,
mass of metal that you’reyou’re allowing to cool.
Whereas if you want something with a bunchof little tiny crystals in it that are all
smashed up against each other,you want to call it super duper quickly.
So that’s where you get into the quenchingthe sword and stuff like that because you
want to create that that crystallinestructure on the inside of the metal.
So thanks. I love– guys, this is why I wanted to bring Emi on,
because Emi talks the nerd in a waythat I understand and I love it.
So.
Yeah.
Are there any other questions in the chat?
Because I’m just going to open that upand then we will.
We’ve been running for a little
over an hour now, so we’ll wrap up ifwe don’t have any questions.
But
I do want to say that Emi also does
fiber weaving, all those things. I have a loom behind me right now.
Yeah.So I would like to bring you back at some
point in the future to talk about that,because I know that I watch your your
projects going by on socialmedia and they’re amazing.
And you’ve got a ton of information
that would be useful againfor historical, fantasy settings.
So yeah.
ShyRedFox is like, “Yay, fiber arts friends!”You guys, you guys, the two of you will get
together and just have allthe Viking fiber chit chat.
Yeah.
That’s been my coping mechanismfor 2020, is fiber arts.
That’s fair.You know, better than liquor.
There we go.
OK, question is, what isyour next casting project?
Are you trying anything new?
Honestly, I am.
I have a metal projectcoming up, but I don’t
I don’t want to use fire for a while
because I’m tired of allof my lost wax projects failing.
So my next metal project is actually I’mgoing to try to do chasing and repoussé.
I’m probably not saying that right.
But it’s the type of of metal workingwhere you have a sheet of metal and you
hammer it into a bunchof different shapes.
And so what I was going on before about
the the crystal structure and theductility and everything like that.
You can cause a metal that hasgotten really work-hardened and brittle
to become softand malleable again,
if you heat it up to the point where youallow those crystals to kind of rearrange
so there will be fire,not as much fire as with casting,
but that that’s what I’d like to try anddabble in next, is a chasing project.
OK, cool,
and I’m being asked about, do you stream,so why don’t you give us your–
I’ve got your Twittername up, but give us your roundup
of social media where everybody can find your projects.I am, I am the same.
I’m super easy.I’m the same across all social media
because nobody else hasclaimed Ivorivet.
So I do occasionally stream on Twitch.
I just moved and I’m still tryingto get my workshop set up.
But if I can get
reliable enough Internet outin my workshop, I definitely will want
to stream the chasing projectthat I’m going to be working on.
If not, I’ll probably just take videoand throw up a YouTube thing later.
But I primarily live on Twitter
where you hear me snark about stuff andworking on costumes and things like that.
But I do occasionallystream on Twitter as well.
Yes, so hang on, let me people are asking
in the chat, it is Ivorivet exactlyas you see here on her Twitter username.
That is also her Twitter name.
And that’s your YouTube name, right?
To the.Yes, yeah.
All the things.So so yes.
So Ivorivet everywhereand she’s worth following.
She puts up nice pictures, the very,
very cool and inspiring and make me feellike I’m not doing anything with my life.
So.
So I think that’s a good place to wrap.
And then I will I would love to have you
back to talk about historical fiber,because that is a huge, huge thing.
Hey, thanks, Seeker for throwingthat link up in the chat.
And guys, thank you so muchfor coming and joining.
And then AndSewingIsHalfTheBattle,who was
oh, we’ve got a YouTube link up too, yay.
Thanks, Kate.So AndSewingIsHalfTheBattle
who was in the chat earlier,
she is doing her stream now where sheis actually talking about appliqué.
So let’s hop over and raid her.
And then if anybody.
Yeah, you guys are welcometo come back. Next week
here is the, is that the Create-in?
I think it’s the Create-in.
I’ve lost all sense of time.
Next week is the Create-in.I don’t know.
I have a calendar for these things.
We’ll check the calendar and then.
Oh hey, thanks for the followDragon Love Water, which is a great name.
And then.Yeah.
So we’re going to go raid Alena
and I can’t, I can’t talk and typeAndSewingIsHalfTheBattle.
That is too much.
Oh, my gosh, all right, too much,too much, too many letters.
So if you want to see it so really and I
know she’s showing some cool stuff becauseshe picked it up from my house to share.
So I know it’s coming in.So.
Emi, thank you so much for joining us.
Everybody give Emi a follow and then I’ll
let you know when we’regoing to have her back.
And then we’re going to hop over the raid.
All right, guys. And the raid is counting down.
