[Jewelry making - Article 01110] - Re: [Orchid] Reconditioning Used Crucibles

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>     I am in the process of acquiring a used casting machines that
>     include with it two used crucibles that have a heavy coating of
>     flux glass on them from use. How would one go about removing said
>     flux glass and reconditioning the crucible for use? 

    Put the crucible on a good fireproof surface, and bring out your
    casting torch. Add lots of borax to the crucible as you heat, and
    more as what you've added melts, until you've got a pretty good fluid
    mass of melted borax. It's nice and fluid because you've heated it
    probably a good deal hotter than normally needed for melting your
    silver or gold, and stirred it around with an appropriate carbon rod
    or the like, so it's picked up the dirty flux glass from the
    crucible. Now just pour it out. If it's hot enough, it will pretty
    much all pour out leaving only a thin layer of borax glass, which
    should be fairly clean. The clay won't be it's original pristine
    white, of course, but you should now have a quite usable crucible. A
    thin coating of that sort is normally how one preps a new crucible
    for use in any case, so this ends up being pretty close. When you get
    too much spalling of the surface of the crucible, leaving you with
    bits of ceramic junk floating around on the surface, or the crucible
    actually cracks, well then it's time to replace it. 

Peter

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