Ben Forges On

Benjamin has been working for months to cast a belt buckle of his own design. He first melts candle wax and pours it on a plate to harden. Then he overlays the wax with a cutout of his buckle logo. (He made "Starfox" from a video game.)

Next he imposes the image into 'greensand', which he also mixed for himself from a recipe online. (See photo on left.) He bakes the greensand until the wax image melts away, leaving him with half his casting mold.




Next, he bakes the other half of his casting mold, with channels to pour in his melted metal. This is the top of the mold.



Next, he builds a hot fire in his forge, and melts the aluminum ingots he previously cast from melting down aluminum cans, collected from the trash where he works.



Then he carefully pours the molten aluminum into his mold. Once poured, he waited impatiently for it to cool!
Once the casting was freed from the mold, the excess aluminum had to be trimmed and ground away. He saves the scraps to be endlessly recycled!

The almost finished belt buckle:

Now all he lacks is attaching the hardware to fasten the buckle to his pants!
He has been amazingly patient as he has been teaching himself by trial and error and internet searches first to build a forge, and then to create 'art' using it!