Slicing stars

Today was given over to melting silver-plated brass and slicing stars from thick melted metal star forms. In the end I was able to slice 5 pairs of star earrings as you can see above.

The metal always looks a bit ordinary when it is poured as you can see below.

After a solid slicing session, using my battery operated angle grinder, I had quite the collection of star and small heart forms. The slicing process requires quite a steady hand - holding the pieces to be sliced  in the vice helps a lot - a mask, safety goggles, earmuffs and gloves are all part of the equipment to do this work. The heart forms in the main will also become earrings or pendants. 

The ground and polished star and heart forms looked good.

The collection of both stars and hearts reflected the outside light as they sat together on the old anvil.

Assembling the heart earrings and pendants will be for another day.