Lost wax casting help

Hi everyone

I'm looking to start creating jewellery pieces via lost wax casting and although I have read and searched so much information, I guess I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed and was hoping you could clarify some things for me. I apologise in advance if these have been covered in previous threads!

These are the questions that are swirling round my brain:

- is there usually a minimum number of pieces you need to send off to a casting company?
- if you send multiple pieces in do you have to attach them to a 'tree' yourself or do they do that for you?
- say you get back a ring that you're super happy with, can you then send it back to them if they also create molds and have a mold made out of it?
- do you need different sized molds for different sized rings?

I'm sorry if the questions are dumb... I'm just very nervous about it all.

Thanks in advance for any guidance at all

Nina

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Several of the questions are "it depends..."

One caster I use (Jewellery Casting Scotland) have a minimum charge for 1-5 items, so it makes less sense to send them less than 5. Others don't (but if you're just casting in Pt, it might be more of an issue)
Every caster I've used has preferred to sprue pieces themselves, although you can multi-sprue parts (so a small sprue with a couple of settings on it, for example). Others will set up a multi sprue for you.
You can have a master cast, finish it (or have the caster finish it) and have a mould made of it; remember that there is shrinkage from wax to casting and then subsequent shrinkage from the 2nd generation waxes to castings.
Yes, different size rings need different size masters. You could make the master so it's easy to resize - if you look at stamped signet ring blanks, for example, they're available flat & you bend up the shank & solder to size. I wouldn't go that far with a casting, but there's usually some latitude in how far you can move it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ps_bond

Several of the questions are "it depends..."

One caster I use (Jewellery Casting Scotland) have a minimum charge for 1-5 items, so it makes less sense to send them less than 5. Others don't (but if you're just casting in Pt, it might be more of an issue)
Every caster I've used has preferred to sprue pieces themselves, although you can multi-sprue parts (so a small sprue with a couple of settings on it, for example). Others will set up a multi sprue for you.
You can have a master cast, finish it (or have the caster finish it) and have a mould made of it; remember that there is shrinkage from wax to casting and then subsequent shrinkage from the 2nd generation waxes to castings.
Yes, different size rings need different size masters. You could make the master so it's easy to resize - if you look at stamped signet ring blanks, for example, they're available flat & you bend up the shank & solder to size. I wouldn't go that far with a casting, but there's usually some latitude in how far you can move it.

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Thank you so much and apologies for the delayed reply! This clears things up a lot!

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