For the past few weeks in my sculpture class we've been working on creating a small wax model in order to cast a bronze statue. Well today was the day we got to travel out to the foundry and watch the pouring.
Creating a bronze sculpture seems exciting enough, however, the process of pouring was something else. Richard, our wonderful teacher, had already taken our wax models to the foundry where they create a ceramic mould around the wax and then heat it up and pour out the wax.
We travelled on the train and bus to Fundere in West Footscray where they were just finishing cleaning up the moulds. We waited as they heated up the bronze to an amazing temperature which produced the most irredescent green flame, cleaned up the bronze (leftover bronze is recycled) and poured the bronze which had a consistency of watery liquid. I'm sorry I don't have pictures but it quite blew me away, that you could heat bronze to that extent.
Left to cool, they then water blasted the ceramic off and cut off the base (the bit that is reused) and we went home with our, yet to be cleaned up sculptures.
And, here is mine.
1 comment:
Oh how cool, molten bronze.......now I get what you meant by the shape being hard to polish!!!
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