To make a bronze is no easy task first you must have a sculpture I create mine with plastalina oil clay or sculpt from wax. This may take only a few hours to weeks even months to create my originals , I study each animal I sculpt by actual field study if possible and or books, film and my own imagination and memory of what I have learned about a particular animal.Once you have created your origional sculpture you must now mold the piece if you plan to reproduce it for casting into a bronze sculpture. The mold process alone has many steps to sum it up the mold is a rubber & fiberglass shell or skin from around your sculpture leaving the impression of your sculpture in the hollow rubber mold. This will allow the artist to fill the mold with hot layers of casting wax producing a hollow duplicate in wax of the origional piece of sculpture. Once a wax has been removed from the mold the foundry or artist has to re - detail the wax copy because of minor flaws such as air bubbles in the wax duplicate and possibly "flashing or parting lines from the mold. Once the wax is back to perfect it's on to the "spuing" or "gating" these are foundry terms used meaning that the wax sculpture has to be attached to a wax poor cup with other wax sprues or gating wich create different chanels to allow the molten bronze to be poored into the poor cup and flow down through the gates this hopefully will capture all of your waxes form and appendages or minute details but before any bronze can even be poored the wax sculpture that has been "gated to a cup must go through the "dipping room" this step is to now dip the cup with wax sculpture into a ceramic "slurry" wich is a silicone liquid like a runny batch of cement. Once dipped the wet coated wax is then dusted with ceramic crushed glass this step of the process is repeated until a thick layer of ceramic shell encases the wax creating a temporary mold th sculpture is then placed on a shelf and left to dry once comletely dried the wax copy is burned out of the temporary mold you now have a hollow mold with the wax sculptures impression left inside. Now the ceramic hollow mold has to be heated in a furnace until glowing hot this will allow less temperature shock and also let the bronze flow down into the mold better. Last but not least the pooring of the bronze, the bronze comes in ingets like gold at Fort Knox ingets are placed into a crucible like the one at the above wich is placed in a furnace.Within a fairly short time the ingets are melted but just melted isn't enough different sculptures require different temperatures when being poored the more delicate or intricate the hotter the bronze needs to be so it can flow hot until the complete sculpture has been duplicated in bronze. Did I say last but not least? actually heres where the fun just begins. Next after the pooring of bronze the ceramic mold now filled with hot bronze must cool once cooled all of the ceramic shell has to be"air hamered"off revealing the bronze sculpture of your wax duplicate, also there is now the poor cup and gating this must be cut off. Now the sculptures are sand blasted and have to have "plugs" welded back in that were cut out in the wax before gating the wax sculpture these plug holes allow drainage of the liquid shell after dipping the wax gated sculpture into the ceramic slurry.After the bronze plugs are welded in the sculpture goes into the metal finishing process or known as "chasing" at most bronze foundries. After, sometimes hours upon hours of sanding the bronze and welding pits the sculpture is ready for the final buffing or polishing with a cloth buffing wheel using a "ruff buffing" compound this will make the bronze surface satiny smooth and ready for the coloration process or art known as the "hot patina" in this step the sculpture sometimes has to have a undercoat applied first using birchwood casing its used for gun bluing . Now the sculpture must be heated with a propane torch while differen't patina chemicals are applied to the bronze surface by spritzing them on with a spritz bottle or by brush application on detailed areas after the desired color or colors are achived the now hot sculpture is brushed with a paste wax wich melts over and into the patina providing a protective wax coating. Some sculptures are finished at this point except for mounting to a marble or wood base, but others still require taping or "masking off" certain areas so they can be "high polished" this distinguishes areas of the bronze to it's shiniest finish possible. I hope in my condensed form I shed some light on how to make a bronze sculpture... Kirk McGuire
