Overview

Participants will work with a range of different waxes; soft wax, pink dental wax sheets, blue wire wax, brown pliable wax as well as liquid wax for dipping and creating hollow forms. You will also use a range of tools including burrs, wax carving files and wax working tools.

Suitable For:

Participants interested in increasing their jewellery knowledge
Participants who have undertaken the Introductory Jewellery and Intermediate Jewellery Short Courses

Topics covered:

Applications for different types of wax; soft, hard, wire and melted dipping wax

Wax carving, forming, shaping and joining

Use of appropriate tools

Carving a ring in wax

Setting stones in wax

Lost wax casting process

Commercial casting locations

OH&S considerations

Course Outcomes

Participants will:

Gain skills and knowledge of the wax working process, enabling them to continue using the basic hand tools from home
Make a number of wax experiments, prototypes and have a sterling silver item of jewellery to take home
connect with commercial casting companies to enable them to continue at home and throughout the course

Please Note: Due to Occupational Health and Safety reasons, participants will not be using the casting machine themselves. The machine will be operated by a Melbourne Polytechnic jewellery staff member and may not be operated during class time.

Melbourne Polytechnic jewellery staff will cast one piece in Sterling Silver for each participant and then students will be encouraged to engage with industry for the casting of any remaining waxes.

Requirements

Basic jewellery knowledge and skills, such as those gained through our Introduction to Jewellery short course. You are required to have had some experience using jewelers tools and working with metal in the following ways to get the most out of this Wax Working short course - Saw Piercing, Drilling, Filing and Sanding/Finishing metal and Soldering.