Sand Casting

w/ Gretchen Schreiber

Materials:
Environmentally friendly Flask Sterling silver or bronze
PetroBond or “green sand,” (scrap or casting grain)
or delpt clay.

Setting up Flask:
-Get a piece of wood, cutting board, or food tray and cover with butcher paper. Place onto it so that it is
open faced.
-Put on latex gloves as sand stains your hands.
-Choose the smallest flask you can for the object that you have.
-Spoon sand into flask, going around the corners first, and lightly hammer it (with any kind of hammer
head or tamper) so it’s packed pretty tightly. Pack to the top of the flask half.
-Using a clean brush, lightly paint a layer of talc or graphite on the edges of the flask where it will
connect with the other flask have as well as over the object you’re creating mold for.
-Push printed or laser cut object halfway into sand and paint another layer of talc onto the object and
the packed sand. Your object should be close to the opening, about .5”
-Place other half of flask onto sand that is holding packed clay and pack the flask half to the top, packing
harder as you get to the top.
-Use a piece of sheet metal (skimmer) to gently pry open center of the mold.
-Keep object in mold and use a drill bit to hand scrape through a channel through the button to the
object. Make sure you scrape all the way up to the object so that there isn’t a wall left where the sand
met the object. Flare the channel out so that it gets larger at the top of the button.
-Do the same thing on the other wide. It will help to tip the flask a little bit so that the clay just falls out.
-Remove the printed or laser cut object. If you can gently wiggle it out with your hands, do that.
Otherwise, you can use pliers or tweezers, or you can take a dowel rod and glue it to the object and pull
it straight out.
-Using a needle tool, make a vent hole at the tallest and longest point of the object.
-Reconnect the two flask parts and bind tightly with binding wire. Finish by using pliers to create a key in
the binding wire.

Pouring Bronze:
-Wear leathers, heat protectant gloves, and goggles.
-Keep crucibles separate for different metals. Crucible:
-Shoot for a temperature that’s about 30 degrees C or 100 degrees F of the melting temperature of the
metal.
-Measure out metal and put to the side. Set out a graphite-lined ingot to pour extra metal into, if

needed.
-Begin heating the crucible and add a sprinkle of flux to clean. When crucible is red hot, add metal to
and put crucible.
-Using a lead stick connected to tongs, stir metal to move away any impurities.
-When metal appears molten hot, pour metal into flask, following metal with torch top to make sure you
keep the flow going and so that the metal doesn’t harden.
-Pour until there is a large button and then pour the rest into the overflow ingot. Turn off torch.
-Let cool for a few minutes, and then open up the flask.
-Scrape off outer layer of char, and then save other sand to reuse.
-Remove metal from flask, tap off clay, and quench.
-Heat the metal up with a torch, and pickle.