Celtic cross clean up.

This project is an interesting one. A customer came with a celtic design which they had carved out of wax and cast themselves! They were having quite a time cleaning it up though, here is what happened.

This is the piece the customer brought in. It's a celtic design that had been roughly carved in wax and then cast in Argentium silver. Argentium silver is very similar to sterling silver however because of it's alloy contents it has a resistance to oxidation during soldering. Techy stuff.

The casting is very rough, it has pits and gaps missing in the design that need to be filled. The project was a challenge to say the least, which made it all the more difficult to turn away :)

The first thing that has to be done is to fill any gaps in the design or major pits in the casting with silver and solder. This is picture of the piece after the fill metal has been soldered on.

Now that fill metal has been added it's time to start the clean up process. In this picture the large pieces of excess metal are being removed with a small needle file.



Differently shaped files are used to clean up all the little areas of the pattern.

This is a small half round file being used on a curved part of the design.

Now that the large pieces of excess metal have been removed, some emery strips have to be made to sand and clean up the inside areas of the celtic pattern.

Spray adhesive is applied to the back of a sand paper.

The sandpaper is then attached to a piece of canvas. The canvas will add extra strength to the sandpaper.

Thin strips are then cut with an exacto knife.

Many strips are needed because they will wear out during clean up process.

The emery strips are held in place using a jeweler's saw frame. In this way the interior areas of the design are cleaned up and made smooth.

The larger interior areas are cleaned up using an abrasive cone that rotates at a high speed.

The exterior areas are cleaned up and the lines are straightened out using abrasive wheels.

The abrasive wheels remove excess metal and smooth out the design.

Different grit wheels are used in order to create a good polish on the piece.

Before the final polish, brushes with polishing compound are used to get at all the hard to reach areas.



A string with polishing compound is used to polish the interior areas of the design.

Lastly the piece is given a high polish using a large polishing buff.

From this.

To this.



The piece came out very well. A night and day difference from the way it came in.