Dateline 9/2/22
I am 75.75 (75-3/4) years old. Thinking about where I am at this point in my life and what I am doing and going to do with the time I have left. Could be 1 day or 15 years. Best I take each day as it comes and make it as good as it can be.
I am “mostly” my own boss, so I spend my time doing “mostly” whatever I want. I am happily married to Gloria, my high school sweetheart since October 1968, so I say “mostly” what I want. Since retirement on March 1, 2015, she is now my only other “boss”. <smile> Since High School (Class of 1964) we have been good partners for 58 years.
Gloria’s favorite activities are piano music (playing & teaching) and heavily into quilting & sewing crafts. She also like selling and sometimes gifting the things I make. She is the main outlet for my craft work.
I have already written much about the craft work I enjoy doing in this blog. KautzCraft started with lost wax casting of silver.
I lament a lot, perhaps too much, on these pages about the time and effort I spend 3D printing, with which I have become much involved. Certainly far too involved, but it is kind of like a drug habit. Hard to kick.
The 3D print design work is creative, but then a machine run by a computer makes the entire build when it is a single one piece print. No hand crafting required. Just print the design. Done!
I originally thought 3D printing would be a good way to produce the models required for casting. This is true. I have been able to cast 3D printed models after after much investment of time, tools, experimentation, and funds.
But I let 3D printing become a dominate single focus activity. Stealing me away from what I know are higher value creative products and materials. Crafting became mostly printable plastic design.
With 3D printing, what I do is make plastic. Good for functional items. With effort, plastic can make master casting models. It is then one intermediate step in a longer path of the creative craft project of metal casting.
I expanded the KautzCraft Studio domain to include all my “making” hobby craft activity. I created separate blogs for each major division. Machine shop, Dimensional Art, 3D printing, LASER Engraving. Links are listed in the left column.
This blog will stay on topic with my silver and lost wax casting.
The best casting results and the craft-work I enjoy the most is making wax master models. I use CNC wax machining for highly accurate models. Wax master models provide for me, better casting quality than 3D plastic printed models. Hand carving wax is a great way to create “organic” master models. The hand work with a wax process can be both additive and subtractive.
I have said all this before, then strayed away. But I really have a desire to do high quality lost wax casting. Silver or any metal is OK except gold, because of its' extreme cost.
WAX is my favorite creative hand-crafting medium. I want to “get away” from the 3D printing curse of making plastic Junque.
I have again put this goal in writing. I will see if I can return to lost wax casting!
Maybe make silver key-fobs again! (Instead of plastic)…