If you have metal scraps and are looking for a way to recycle them, you might want to try water casting.

Sterling Silver Water Castings

It is really easy to do and all you need is a torch, scraps of metal, something to hold the metal while you melt it, and a dish of water (I used a large ceramic bowl).

I’m mostly using argentium sterling silver in my work these days, but I have lots of leftover “plain” sterling silver, in the form of wire and scraps, so I used some of the wire for my castings. If I had a crucible, I’d melt scraps down & pour them into the water, but since I don’t, I just held wire in my soldering tweezers and held a flame on the end, melting up a ball until the melted ball got too heavy and fell into the water. You can see the results above. I like the golden color on the outside of the silver, so I might not bother doing any polishing/finishing. Maybe add a coat of wax to protect the finish?

You need a pretty large flame, so be sure nothing that could be heat damaged is too close to your torch. This plastic bag was at least a foot away:

Semi-Melted Plastic

What to do with water castings? I think I’m going to drill holes in mine and use them as beads to dangle from earrings and pendants.

I’d like to play with this technique more, but I need a crucible for melting the metal in order to get larger castings, so I’m not sure when it will happen.

I did try a little argentium silver, and got very different results using essentially the exact same technique:

Argentium Sterling Silver Water Castings

No oxidation, which is one of the properties of argentium silver that I love when I’m doing my fusing work, and it melts differently so the shapes and textures came out different from the regular sterling.

I haven’t tried fine silver yet, but I bet I’d get different looking results that way too…something else to try!

If you’ve done water casting, I’d love to see how yours came out. Leave a link in the comments if you have pictures of your water casting somewhere online or have seen good examples.