How do you pewter cast

If you are buying clay, avoid air-drying clay as this contains nylon fibres; a natural clay is ideal. Items can be pressed into the clay to create an imprint which creates a perfect mould. Below you can see some different imprints and the resulting pewter cast objects. The wizard hat bottom right was created by pressing clay around a shell and twisting the shell out to help keep the ridges distinct.

For both methods of creating a cast, the final step before pouring in any pewter is to create a wall of clay around your cast to keep the pewter in place. This also creates a shape around the cast which can be used in the final design.

The clay or cuttlefish bone moulds need to be placed on a casting board; use blobs of clay to secure and keep the mould level ready for casting.

Use talc or graphite powder to lightly dust the moulds in order to reduce surface tension. Reducing surface tension enables the molten metal to flow evenly around the mould indentations.

Be sure to brush the talc evenly into all areas and remove any excess powder. It features a low mixed viscosity and cured rubber exhibits very low linear shrinkage.

Pot life is 40 minutes and rubber cures in 24 hours to a relatively hard Shore 60A. Applications include making foundry patterns, flat pattern reproductions and casting low-temperature melt metal alloys such as tin and pewter.

It is a soft metal and can be shaped easily by hand tools and machine tools. Due to its low melting point approximately degrees centigrade it is suitable for casting. Pewter can be purchased as ingots and a typical ingot is shown below.

I enlarged the pour spout area a bit with an X-acto knife, to make it easier to pour in the molten pewter. Once my mold was ready to go, I got ready to melt and cast the pewter. I used an electric range and an old cast iron skillet to melt down my small bar of pewter.

While the pewter was melting about 15 minutes with the range set on HIGH , I prepped my mold for the cast. I lined my mold box with tinfoil and used some wadded up tinfoil to make sturdy spot for the mold to sit. My mold box was made of metal.

If you used plastic or cardboard for your mold box, please find a metal box, tray, or something along those lines to use for this project. After 5 minutes, I carefully touched the outside of the mold to see if it was still hot. It was just a little warm, so I laid it flat and cut the tape holding it together and slowly opened the mold. The cast looked okay for the first time working with this material. Not perfect, but alright. I poured a couple more casts to get a more experience casting pewter and they also turned out okay.

I think since this was my first time casting pewter, I should have gone with a simpler mold.