I wanted to how the process I use for making crosses from Solid silver using the lost wax casting method. I’ll publish a more detailed look at the casting process soon.  The whole process starts by making a master of the design by carving it from a block of hard wax.

From this master, I can either use that to cast a silver version, or make copies of the wax using a silicon rubber mold. When I make a mold of the master, I can then make more than one in silver, as I can duplicate the waxes. Once cast in silver, the rough crosses are still attached to the sprue as below:

I seperate the crosses from the sprue with a fine saw, and carefully clean with a fine file to give a smooth edge. The cross surface is also cleaned and polished. A small half circle bail ring is also soldered onto the cross before polishing, allowing the pendant to hang from a chain. The silver cross has a 4mm hole in the centre to mount a 4mm facetted stone. I made a few crosses with different stones mounted in the middle, from cubic zirconia to topaz and garnet.

The mounting hole being all the way through the cross allows light to pass through when held up the light. This shows the stones at their best.

We have a number of pieces of handmade jewellery in our etsy shop,  Etsy store. If you don’t see the exact piece, please contact me through the store, as pieces are one-off, it may have sold, but there are equally beautiful pieces becoming available all the time.

• 

• 

•