Low Tech Pewter Casting In The Kitchen

Last month we shared an incredibly impressive example of how you can do some pewter casting with a laser cutter. Since pewter melts at a relatively low temperature, materials like MDF can withstand the heat wel enough to be a decent mold. However, that tutorial really needed a laser to create the details and 3d effects.

On twitter, Dave Sanderson showed a great example of how things don’t need to be so complicated.

#Pewter Elephant #done #casting #making pic.twitter.com/BTHPjOlWwt

— Dave Sanderson (@SolutionsByDave) November 22, 2020

in his example you can see how cutting simple shapes in wood, and layering them will let you create 3d shapes out of the molten metal. Looking at his elephant you can see that you could realistically do this by hand if you wanted, or with a jigsaw, no fancy laser cutter required.

As you can see by looking through the media on his twitter account, Dave simply broke down the elephant into basic shapes in roughly 5 layers, then cut them from wood with a nice lined up hole for some bolts going through the whole stack. He bolted them all together and poured in the pewter and voila! A 3d sculpture from 2d simple cuts.