The Colorado statesman., 1912-04-27
SOLID GOLD rings
Some Are Stamped Out with q
Die, Some Cut from Tubes.
BUT MOST OF THEM ARE CAST
AS A RULE, THEY ARE FORMED
IN MoLDs OF cUTTLEFisH
BONE, INTO WHICH THE PAT
TERN SINKS AS THOUGH PRESS
ED INTO WAx-MAkING THE
MOLDS,

IGHN SINKS AS IHOUG1 PHESS-
ED INTO WAx-MAklNG THE
MoLDS.
Cuttlefish bone is familiar to most
people, as it is seen thrust between
the bars of bird cage for birds to
peck at. Birds clean their beaks on
1t, and they like to eat it. But cuttle-
fish bone has other and more interest
Ing uses. 1t is used in the manufac-
ture of tooth powder and of polishing
powder and in the making of a pre-
pared food for birds, but perhaps the
most interesting of its uses is in the
making of molds in which to cast gold
rings.
Some gold rings are cast in tiny
TASKS containing molds of fine sand;
others are stamped out with a die.
Wedding rings are made from drawn
tube of gold in which the rounded out
er shape of the ring is produced on a
mandrel, the several sections thus
formed being then sawed off even
when finished and polished to form
perfect ring. But Of the vast number
of solid gold rings produced by man.
ufacturing jewelers., including rings to
be mounted with stones, rs per cent
are cast in cuttlefish bone molds.
Such a mold can be used but once,
and so the manufacturing jeweler
uses a lot of cuttlefish bone. The
molds may be made in two, three.
four or five parts, according to the
elaborateness of the ring to be mold
ed. The bone serves both as flask and
as molding material.
Suppose the molder is to make for
ring comparatively simple in shape
three part mold. He sits at a bench
on which he has brass patterns of the
rings to be nodded. The manufactur-
ing jeweler has hundreds, many hun
dreds, of these pattern rings, to which
he Is continually adding designs.
Handy by, the molder has a box of
cuttlefish bone. Only bone of the fin
est quality and finest texture is used,
and such bone serves for this purpose
admirably. Under pressure of an OBJ
1ect upon 1t this bone breaks down
perfectly and with no surrounding
fractures or fissures. 1t takes an i'm
plastic material would do, while at the
same time it stands up perfectly
around the impression made.
The molder takes cuttlefish bone
in its familiar oval shape and with a
little sharp-toothed saw saws off the
tapering sides and the ends, leaving
keystone shaped or an oblong block.
Then straight across he saws off one
end of this block about a quarter Of
its length from the end and then the
larger piece he saws through from
side to side midway of its thickness.
Now he has the original block of bone
divided into three parts.
He rubs the face of each of these
parts perfectly smooth on a metal
plate set before him conveniently in
the bench, and then the material is
ready for use as a mold. The molder
turns one of the two bigger blocks
over on the bench with the smoothed
surface up and picks up the model
ring, and with a deft, sure touch he
presses this model down for half its
thickness all around into the delicate
ly fragile but evenly textured bone
this in the case of a three piece mold
at one end of the block, leaving the
head or cap Of the ring projecting
beyond the end edge Next he picks
up the other half of this block, turns
its smooth face down and presses that
down upon the ring as it lies with half
it's thickness projecting above the sur
face of the lower block, and now he
has a mold of the ring complete ex-
cept for tho projecting head
At this stage he picks up that end
piece of the bone that he had sawed
off and presses that with its smooth
face down upon the rings head, so
taking an impression of that, and then
he has the mold complete, but with
the model ring inside of it.
Now he scores lightly this model
outside, across its side edges, and he
scores lines from the top block to the
sides, so that when he has taken the
mold apart he can put 1t together
again precisely as It should be, and
then he opens 1t and takes out the
pattern, and If anywhere the nodded
form should require touch of smooth
ing he does that, and then, beginning
small and opening out wider, he cuts
oN4t in the inner sides of the two
halves of the big block from the bend
of the ring mold out to the end of the
block an opening, the gate. through
which the molden gold will be poured
when the ring is nodded. Then he
puts the pieces of the mold together
again and binds them with soft wire,
and there's your cuttlefish bone mold
perfect and complete.
Sometimes they bind half a dozen
or a dozen of such molds together and
cut little channels inside from the
gate to each one of the separate molds