Water Casting Shibuichi Ingots - A Japanese Copper Silver Alloy 

Can we use flux along with scrap?

Could you please melt some silver and cast it on dry copper sulfate salt? I'd like to see it's amazing pretty texture. copper sulfate is hazardous so please read about it if you decide to do it.

Wow Frey... That's a story.... Don't know what to say to that.... I used a clean stainless pot for my pour. But I do remember reading about one guy doing 250 - 300g copper pours. He made over 80 pours with this casting method, 4 of them resulted in an explosion. 3 of them were directed upwards out of the pot, the 4th one split the pot in half and knocked him over, luckily he was OK. He maintains in his writings he had no idea what caused it and why. Your comment is really interesting in that respect. The only question I have is would copper behave in the same way ? Terrible news about the 2 workers. Definitely a reason to give this casting method a wide berth. At the time of making this video I had no idea about the dangers, but I found the process fascinating and as it was such an old method of casting I thought it would be relatively safe. I guess some things are best left alone.... Looks like I won't be trying this one again.... Thanks for sharing that with us. Andy 🍺🍺🍺

Thank you Chris. I had a great time fudging my way through these pours - even if they were a failure on the most part. I did have much better results on my second Shibuichi video though, you can really see the colour changes there, and the end results were what i was trying to achieve in this video. I have a sneaky suspicion there's a lot more to this water casting game than meets the eye. There are some mad mechanics at play when you pull the ingot from the water. I will have one more go at this as i have some silver left, but making too much of this stuff will soon start to get expensive.

Cheers Joe 🍺🍺🍺

You can probably use Borax, but I'm not 100%. Alternatively Synthetic Exothermics sell a range of bronze fluxes. BA 98, BA 312 and BA 315. BA 315 seems the most popular. Cheers Andy 😎👍🥂

Shibuichi means one fourth in Japanese referring to 25% silver and 75% copper, although it can vary from 5% silver to over 50% and still be classed as a Shibuichi. The different silver content will give varying shades of grey within the metal after a chemical patina has been applied. Other similar alloys are Shakudo, meaning red and copper, which is an alloy of copper and gold. Typically around 4-10% although my pockets aren't deep enough for that one... Another is Kuro-Shibuichi, Kuro meaning black, which is a combination of Shibuichi and Shakudo. The water casting process for Shibuichi would form the basis of the Tsuba, the sword guard made by Japanese sword smiths and would produce a pebble of annealed copper. The Shakudo and Kuro-Shibuichi would be used to decorate the swords. A chemical patina would also be used which is called Rokusho to colour the Shibuichi grey / aquamarine. The Shakudo would patina to become deep indigo / black and Kuro-Shibuichi would develop a black patina. Radish is also used in the patination process. Another alloy in this class is Kurimodo, which is 99% copper and 1% arsenic. All of the above alloys are part of the Irogane class of metals, which means coloured metal. Mostly used on swords and other decorative items. Check out the other Shibuichi video where I manage this with a lot more success. Cheers Andy 🍺🍺🍺👍👍👍😎😎😎

@@MeltandCast ahhh very cool, so many interesting things from around the world. cheers :)

@@JulianMakes Yeah, I'd absolutely love to experiment with some of those metals but sadly £300 of gold would only net you 200g of Shakudo @ 4% !!! And the arsenic alloy... Well I shan't be trying that one haha !!! The Rokusho patina process is supposed to be quite hard to reproduce both in making it and in applying it and not many people know the true recipe outside of Japan. I will experiment more with the Shibuichi though, as that's quite affordable. I will also have a go at the patina as there 2 or 3 recipes that are fairly close for that online, if I can get hold of the chemicals. The black colour of the Shakudo is totally unreal though, absolutely jet black, you wouldn't think it's possible for metal to do that, it doesn't even look like metal. There are some stunning pictures on the web, it's well worth a look. All the best, Andy 🍺🍺🍺👍👍👍😎

Sure you can, but bear in mind your casting will only be as good as the material you start off with... Re-melting slag and all the oxide rich material is never a good starting point for a casting. Better to use good clean metal from the beginning. Cheers Andy 🥂👍😎

It's a shame the white balance made everything go yellow at the end. I'm curious what the third ingot looked like. Have you hear of anyone casting rods by this method?

Some people wear copper as jewelry but it is toxic and I'm not sure it's a good idea in a ring. May turn your skin green. I cast shibuichi and the reddish color is probably with the lowest silver content and after it patina a little the higher silver contents produce a lighter bronze like color - it's an interesting alloy.

Hand guards at the base of the balde

Shibuichi is a different technique of making mokume gane. Takes a chemical other than sulfur to produce the final colors

@@lordeverybody872 you are absolutely wrong. Monkume gane is pattern welded copper and nickel, not an alloy or a “technique”. This IS sibuichi, a silver and copper ALLOY of the IROGANE class of Japanese metals that WERE used to make sword guards and other ornamentals. Nobody even mentioned sulphur, so I have no idea why you used that word. Furthermore, that is not the question that was asked. I think you are insane and would like you to go away.

Not by much Mans, silver is only about 7% more conductive than copper. It's more for the aesthetic value rather than improving the conductivity. The silver copper mixture has a beautiful sheen to it. Cheers Andy 😎👍🥂

@@MeltandCast Thanks! Great video

Thanks Abel, It was my first attempt at water casting... I made this video from trying to piece together various other water casting videos, most of which didn't show any info on how to do it correctly. A lot of it was guesswork - so don't laugh when I tell you it was a canvas shopping bag !!! It was way too thin and the metal burnt through the cloth after a couple of pours. In my other water casting videos I used denim cloth from an old pair of jeans and that worked really well for multiple pours. The only issue I had was trapped steam under the denim as the water was around 90C. I got round this by poking a small hole in the edge and letting the steam bubbles escape through the hole before pouring. The main thing is to use a heavy duty natural fibre like cotton and not man made fibres. Check out Ford Hallam's Metalworking Channel as he is a real master at this kind of thing. It was his older videos that prompted me to try this, unfortunately there wasn't much info at the time on how to actually do it. He has however just released a video a couple of days ago explaining this process in more detail, it's worth a watch. The water MUST be hot, 80C+ it's quite dangerous otherwise. Best wishes Andy 😎😎😎🍺🍺🍺👍👍👍

Might try welding blanket or maybe carbon fiber if you must use a “fabric”. Maybe ceramic plate, concrete, or even wood, so long as it is an inert (nonreactive) substance.

@@MeltandCast thanks you very much for the info 😃👍

No, I'm not a plumber, but the father of my Son's girlfriend is... He saves all his copper for me and I return the favour. He has around 4-500kg I can call on when needed !!! 😜😜😜

Ohh that's awesome man, I was just curious.. thank you for the great videos !!!

Phosphorus is used as a degassing agent in copper. I don't have any experience of using it yet. I do have some copper degassing tubes and they contain 14g of phosphor copper per tube and will degass a 50kg melt, so in terms of degassing I would reckon on using 1.4g of phosphor copper per 5kg of copper. It is worth bearing in mind copper is extremely difficult to cast well, whilst shrinkage is minimal, you will almost always have problems with surface porosity and its ability to fill a mould correctly due to the speed at which it cools. I usually try to pour copper at around 1300c after a long soak in the furnace to absorb as much heat as possible. Personally I like copper though because of the challenge and I have a good supply of it and can live with a little porosity here and there, I call it character !!! You'll need to mitigate the gas intake as best you can with a cover flux such as crushed glass or borax. Once you have some phosphor copper you can try that and see if that helps as well. Hope this helps... Cheers Andy 👍🥂🍺

It's complicated, but generally fluxes are used either to clean, purify or to act as a flowing agent. If using a cover flux I think you add it once the first lot of metal is molten, any subsequent metal is then added through the covering layer. Cleaning fluxes can be added at the end of the melt if being used to purify or clean the metal of impurities before skimming the slag. With Shibuichi, you'd use charcoal with the melt to help prevent oxygen from being absorbed into the metal. When the metal is poured the charcoal floats on top of the water. Water casting is quite dangerous though so I'd recommend lots of research first, seriously.... I accept no liability. Cheers Andy 😎🥂👍

Phosphur copper is used to de-gass copper. About 3g per 10kg should be enough. Cheers Andy 😎👍🥂

إنها مجرد ماء عند حوالي 90 درجة مئوية. لا شيء يضاف. توجد طبقة من القماش / قماش 4 بوصات / 10 سم تحت السطح. صب الماء خطير جدا. لا يجب أن تجرب هذا دون فهم المخاطر. مع أطيب التمنيات آندي :)

الله يحفظك انت انسان عظيم استاذي اتمنى ان يوفقك اللهفي علمك وعملك

علمتنا اكثر مما تعلمت في مجال العمل والدراسه

Commercial copper tubes in the UK contain roughly about 0.15% phosphorus. Perhaps this is another ratio you could experiment with. Copper loves to absorb gas though, so anything you can do to prevent that gas being absorbed into the melt in the first place will help. Obviously commercial copper is produced to an exact standard which is why they can produce gas free copper so consistently. Cheers Andy 🥂👍🍺

@@MeltandCast when use copper tube

If that was english you just messed it up.

Thanks for your comment. Yes mate, these things don't always go to plan. But it was my first time water casting. I'm still new to this, and that was one of my first videos. Cheers 🍺🍺🍺👍👍👍