Carving The Original Design

All of the original designs start with a block of Jeweler's carving wax. The wax is very hard and with talent and patience, any design can be carved from this material. A single wax carving will take several weeks to complete.

Shown here is a Sphinx Cat design carved from wax. This will be the "Master Wax" and from this piece we will make a mold so that it can be reproduced and cast in either gold or silver.

Making The Wax To Cast

Esquivel & Fees makes a mold from the original green wax master. The Mold is pink rubber and when the mold is finished, it is cut in half. The original is removed and where the original was, there is now nothing.

To create the wax for casting the empty mold is filled, under pressure, with hot casting wax. When the wax has cooled, it is removed from the mold.

Preparing The Wax Pieces For Casting

After removing the wax from the mold it is inspected and carefully cleaned. If the wax is approved, it is then attached to a special base (shown in blue above right).

The attached waxes and the base are called the Tree.

Investing The Wax Tree

Each wax "Tree" is placed in a heavy metal container, called a Flask. The Flask is filled with a special white mixture called Investment. The investment must be vacuumed in order to remove any bubbles which may form during pouring.

After the vacuum process, the Flask sets, undisturbed for 2 hours. During this time it hardens.

Removing The Wax From The Flask

The wax Tree is now completely surrounded with hardened investment. In order to cast, all of the wax inside must be removed.

The first step in removing the wax is in a steam oven. The steam will melt most of the wax and it will flow out of a hole in the bottom of the flask.

Burning Out The Flask

The flasks are removed from the stem oven and then placed in a computer controlled burnout oven. This burnout oven will bring the flask temperature up to 1700 degrees. At this very high temperature, all of the remaining wax will "burn out" and the temperature will also make the white investment extremely hard so that it will withstand the hot temperature of the melted metal.

After a period of about 12 hours the oven will gradually reduce the flask temperature so that is it perfect for casting the melted silver or gold. Once the burn out process is complete, the wax will be completely gone. Basically where the wax was, Esquivel & Fees will now replace the empty space with the melted metal.

Casting Into The Flasks

The Casting machine is computer controlled to assure perfect castings. Also, the oxygen inside of the casting machine is replaced with an inert gas to prevent the oxygen from contaminating the silver or gold during the extremely high temperatures of the casting process.

The view (on right) shows the melted metal inside of the casting chamber. When the metal reached the correct temperature, the Flask is taken out of the burnout oven, placed under the melted metal and then it is sealed inside of the casting machine.

A vacuum is pulled on the flask and the melted metal is released from the melting pot and into the flask. The vacuum pulls the metal into the spaces in the flask that were once wax. When the metal has cooled, the cast flask is removed from the casting machine.

Removing The Cast "Tree" From The Flask

When the flask is removed from the casting machine, it is still very hot ... over 900 degrees. The hot flask is submersed into cool water and the temperature change causes the white investment to break apart, leaving the Cast metal "Tree" exposed.

Whatever was wax, is now metal.

Removing The Jewelry From The Cast Tree

Next, the individual pieces must be cut off of the Tree.

Cast metal at this stage is not very attractive and must now be hand buffed and cleaned.

Cleaning Freshly Cast Jewelry

Before any work can be done on your design it must be cleaned and polished. Esquivel & Fees polish all of their designs by hand. This process takes much longer than quicker methods, like tumbling, but the final finish is worth the extra time and effort.

Buffing is done in three steps. The first step is with an aggressive buffing compound and each successive step uses a finer compound to produce the highest quality finish available.

Final Production

After the design is polished, Esquivel & Fees then solders rings, attaches settings for stones and do any other work necessary to assemble your design.

After the soldering is complete, the design is buffed again. Then your design is lightly buffed and steam cleaned to remove any remaining residue. Now your order is professionally placed into attractive gift boxes and is now ready to be enjoyed.