More module 3

So, this post has only one project but I am soooo excited about it. Still working in wax. This was a wax carve-out. Basically carving an image/design into the wax. Back in my last semester in college my final senior "thesis" of sorts was a series of pen and ink drawings that were abstractions of a coiled snake. Here's just one of the 10 I had made:

To start I drew out a new design. We reduced the image down to the size I wanted for my pendent. After gluing the piece of paper onto a flat block of wax I poked holes into it deep into the wax in order to get an outline of all the details in the image. After peeling the paper off there was just a lot of carving to do. Since I wanted to increase the 3-dimensionality of the piece I carved it so that the pendent would be domed. Then I needed to hollow out the back. When I considered that design done I weighed the wax and did the conversion factor to see how much silver I would need- 43.5 grams of silver. IE a fuckton. So, more thinning out of the wax form was called for. When I finished, the calculation came out to 32.5 grams, so, MUCH better, but still a lot. For casting I had to add on a network of sprues for the metal to flow through the entire piece and attach it to a base:

Apparently I took the picture before I added the last 2 sprues (one on either side of the pink wax).
After all of that added wax- the piece came out to needing about 42 grams of silver. We did a process known as investing, which is creating a plaster mold of the wax. A steel cylinder is placed into the rubber base and looks like this. The plaster is then poured into the cylinder and allowed to cure. After, you pry the rubber base off and now have a hole for the wax to melt out of when placed into the oven. Next is the actual casting, which is awesome.
Had to saw off the entire sprue system. Normal polishing involves two steps: zam compound which is more of a burnisher and takes away metal, and step two is the rouge compound which really buffs a piece up and does not take off any metal. I took my piece and zammed it. Then, I went and got the silver-black which is a sulfur mixture that antiques silver. I got the entire piece nice and black, made sure to get into every crevice. Then I rouged up the piece and left certain areas in the piece antiqued. This makes the piece look even more defined. Gives it character:

I forgot to mention that I also carved out a little wax form for the bale to hold the pendent. Polished it up the same way as the pendent itself. Drilled a hole into each piece and connected them with a jump ring. The chain is from another necklace.
Here's the back of the piece all hollowed out. Had the texture in the wax and it came out just like I wanted. What's fun is having hollowed it out, it's not a smooth interior- it looks like the outside inversed:

So, there you have it!