Silver Fish Necklace

Just thought I'd document my first foray in to jewellery making (and casting for that matter). The fish on the left is my copy of the original piece on the right. The necklace is one my mum has had for 20 years and a good friend of hers always mentioned it and said how fond of it she was every time they met. My mum was planning to give the necklace to her for her birthday, but as I've talked to her about my plans to make some platinum rings among other things, she thought she'd ask me (about 10 days before the birthday!) if I could copy it. I said I'd have a go...

Fortunately it all worked out... surprisingly! Drilling the hole though the middle needed a huge slice of luck, I do have a fair bit of experience with drilling bits and bobs, but I used a 2.4mm drill bit, I didn't want to use much smaller as they can bend and walk off centre, and the thinnest part of the tail seemed to only be 2.4001mm across!! Was a lot of fun and I encourage everyone to give things a go if they're tentative about trying it, I think that's my main point, what have you to lose?

https://i.ibb.co/NmD2sc2/Fish.jpg

Your casting has come out well. I would have used a smaller drill so that the wall thickness is larger, with wear it may break through. I agree with you about giving it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Well done came out very good, not too many people have success on there first casting foray.

Very nice, came out good!

I can sympathise with the drilling. Your heart's in your mouth. Welldone, Dennis.

Very nice! And I like your attitude, just have a go and see what happens.

Hi and well done with the casting and especially drilling the hole through. As a tip for next time, if you can position a wooden dowel through the hole of the master when filling with sand and reposition it there when pouring your silver, you may be left with some sort of hole in the cast piece so reducing the need to drill through the whole solid piece.
Attachment 12601

It may be too fine to withstand the heat and collapse but you can see with this ring casting the example I am totally unable to explain.

Photo lifted from a FB group, not mine.

Thanks all for the kind words and suggestions. Dowel is the idea isn't it I think, I can't remember why I didn't really consider that. I think because a small dowel wouldn't stay central when making the cast and a dowel large enough to stay central would restrict the flow of the metal in to the tail when casting? I need more experience before I can really comment on that though!

And full disclosure, it was my first foray, but third attempt!!

First attempt I don't think I had the silver anywhere near hot enough, I thought at the time my vents weren't big enough (hence the huge vents in the successful piece), but that was probably only half of the problem.
https://i.ibb.co/YRBc0vF/111.jpg

Second attempt was nearly perfect, very minor imperfections on one side and a void on the lower jaw, perhaps where a bit of the sand/clay came loose? You really do have to be careful making those vents, perhaps petrobond would have been better for a beginner??
https://i.ibb.co/MGD6XnL/222.jpg