Cold Working a Casting-Part Two

In a prior post, I showed a photo of the cloudy edge left on a cast dragonfly after I used a wet tile saw to trim off the excess glass. I also need to sandblast to remove all the plaster embedded in the glass. Before sandblasting it, I placed the edges, then the bottom of the piece on a wet belt sander to even out any sharp or rough edges that might remain. This was not an easy task since the casting is large and heavy.

Now I am ready to sandblast. You can see where I have placed the dragonfly inside the blast cabinet. I use black beauty blast media since it has little to no silica in it. However, you still need to wear a protective mask (not a paper one) and have eye protection since small bits of the media does escape any blast cabinet.



This photo shows the glass with about 80% of the blasting completed. It takes about 10-15 minutes to sandblast it properly. You do have to start and stop blasting in order to turn the work around and upside down. It will look darker in color due to the black basting media. After blasting, you need to thoroughly scrub and hand wash the glass.



This is a photo of the glass after cleaning and still wet. It looks darker that it actually is and will lose that shiny color once dry.