waxs

Are most people buying their wax's or do people still carve their own? I
have retired and have been out of the jewelry business a while, but still
love it. I have taken and finished the GIA courses and still every once in
a while will get out a book and refresh myself on it.

Wax carving was really of major interest to me, but I was never any good at
it.


---Lazy
http://www.funcraftics.com

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:35:10 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "The LazyBum"
wrote:


Are most people buying their wax's or do people still carve their own?

That totally depends on whom you're talking about. No professional I know would
bother buying waxes. Among other things, many of the companies selling waxes
are selling the product of molds made from already commercially made and
finished jewelry. In short, knock-offs. Often, the wax models are not great
quality, or are old tired designs that have been around for too long already, or
which will produce an overly light weight casting not of great quality. And
even with good waxes, what are you getting? Someone elses idea. No great
competative advantage there or anything to be proud of. If one is buying that
sort of thing, it's easier to just buy the finished casting from one of the
major findings houses. At least that way, the quality of the casting is likely
to be OK, and you're reasonably assured that what you're getting doesn't
constitute copyright infringement of some sort.

But the companies selling was models appear to still be in business. My guess
is the hobby jewelers still find that of use now and then.

It IS true, though, that not all jewelers are all that good at wax carving, or
don't always have the time to do a good job of it. The new kid on the block in
that department is the use of CAD/CAM or rapid prototyping technology. With
these methods, the design is built up entirely on the computer in 3D modelling
software. The finished design file can then be fed to one of several types of
machine, from CAM milling machines that will carve the wax, to RP machines that
can "grow" a wax model. At least one such product results in a finished metal
model, not a wax model (though it's not precious metal, but a bronze infused
steel, good for sculpture.) There are many advantages to CAD for this type of
use. Precision in the carving is one, plus the ease and speed of making changes
to a design, or altering it for the next in a series, etc. The equipment and
software obviously is more costly than a set of wax files and scrapers, but for
an ever increasing number of commercial shops, the benefits outweigh the costs.
Software can take a while to learn, of course, but once mastered, the production
speed for each new model can be considerably shorter than for hand carved waxes,
with precision that most wax carvers would find hard to even approach by hand.

And of course the major manufacturers don't buy their wax models either, but
make them in house. Usually, most these days start with a CAD/CAM master model,
and then produce rubber molds from the resulting wax or casting, to produce the
production waxes.

And a few of us still hand make the original metal models from which the rubber
molds are made, not starting with a carved wax at all, when that sort of model
will be the better way to do it.

Hope that helps.

Peter Rowe

I
have retired and have been out of the jewelry business a while, but still
love it. I have taken and finished the GIA courses and still every once in
a while will get out a book and refresh myself on it.

Wax carving was really of major interest to me, but I was never any good at
it.


---Lazy
http://www.funcraftics.com