Seams Like a Lady

So my next jewelry project is a big undertaking. I want to make my own strip twist wire, and then turn that into a Hercules knot necklace (and redo my old Hercules knot necklace, which I did incorrectly the first time.) Strip twist wire is how wire was made in Rome, and everywhere else for that matter, prior to the invention of draw plates. Metal was beaten into a sheet. Cut into very thin strips, and then the strips were twisted kind of like candy canes. The flat edges curl up on the center spine, and a round wire is formed. It gets rolled between two flat, heavy plates to compact it. See the images below from “Jewelry Technology in the Ancient and Medieval World” by Jack Ogden.

I definitely feel like this is a challenging thing, and I’m not at all sure I’ll succeed. But I want to try!

Today was the start, and it was full of failures. I started with an ounce of silver, graciously gifted to me by my Laurel, Earl Cathyn, and working in his shop, because he’s got a beefier torch than I’ve got. Well, we learned that his torch isn’t beefy enough for casting. Even an ingot.

First try, there was too much borax in the crucible, and we got melted borax on the metal. Along with a lumpy bit.

We decided to try again. That was a mistake. We never got as good a pour again.

The metal wouldn’t stay hot enough as it was coming out of the crucible. That continued to be our problem.

Third try, the silver still didn’t want to stay melted in the crucible. It was solidifying as I was pouring, even with the torch on it. The entire time, we were actually using two torches. An acetylene torch and an oxy-propane mini.

At this point, we admitted defeat. We just didn’t have the fire power needed. We decided to melt the silver one last time, into a clean little round. If nothing else, I can forge that out into a sheet, and cut my strips from that.

So yeah, don’t do this. We built up too much of a borax glaze in the crucible to begin with. But this may happen, either way. The metal got stuck in a borax glaze bezel. So we had to heat it one more time to melt the borax and release the metal puck.

Cathyn was able to crack off most of that borax with a pair of heavy pliers, and I’m thinking I’ll bang off most of the rest of it with forging. It’s currently all on the back side of the piece. I’ll definitely get it all cleaned up before getting too far down the line with forging.

So this was my/our misadventure this morning. I have zero experience with casting, and Cathyn has very little. So if anyone wants to offer advice, I’m here for it. I don’t know how much of it I’ll ever do, but I’d like to know more about it.