This time I've decided to make a brass paperweight. For this purpose I had to prepare a lot of brass scrap. As scrap brass I used old taps and other sanitaryware items. In addition, I prepared green sand. I had to find something which could be the pattern for the paperweight base and I found nice piece of square steel sheet. In fact melting and casting process consisted of 2 part. The first was making a base and the second a handle.

Step 1: Making the Mold

First of all, I made the mold using green sand, flask and steel plate as a pattern. In fact, my paperweight base should look like a square brass ingot. It is always the problem to put a pattern right between the cope and the drag. This time wasn't an exception. :) I couldn't find a middle between the cope and the drag, so my pattern became on 90% in the drag.

Step 2: Take Out Tha Base and Start Melting

It was hard to take the pattern out of the mould. Firstly, because it was whole mostly in the drag. Therefore, I actually didn't have anything on its surface that to take it. Secondly, this thing was heavy enough. It weighted more than 1 kg (2lb 3oz). I had an idea to use magnets. It worked. I took 2 magnets and took the base out of the mold.

Step 3: Melting and Casting

I melted some brass. As usual not as much as I needed :). During the melting process, brass tried to find a way through the green sand but it was easy to cut off all redundant pieces.

Step 4: Cutting and Polishing

Cutting and polishing the base till it became a little yellow square mirror! :)

Step 5: The Same Work With Paperweight Handle

I did the same work with a handle. As a pattern I used a handle of a pot lid. During the pouring some metal burnt through the flask but it wasn't damaged to hard.

Step 6: Connecting the Handle and the Base

To connect the handle and the base I cut thread, screwed in a bolt (previously cut off a bolt head) and fix it with epoxy. Final weight is 1.280 kg (2lb 13oz).

Step 7: How to Use...

Finally, I’ve got pretty good brass paperweight. It'll be useful to press some papers or to press the scanner cover when scanning documents which consist of a lot of pages or books.