The Bronze Foundry

Today we went and visited our Bronze Foundry where our patination is done on our sculptures. We spent a few hours and were lucky enough to have a tour of the foundry where the wax sculpture process was explained to us. This is a similar process used by the foundry who cast the rhino's.

The first step is creating the original artwork made out of clay or plaster which we then bring to the foundry. 

A negative master mould of the original artwork is then made out of silicone rubber, reinforced by plaster. This mould is hollow inside and can allow other substances to be poured inside it.

Once this mould is made, extremely hot wax is poured inside it in equal layers to create another negative mould made purely out of wax. This has to be done as the wax is a strong enough substance to hold the bronze.

After the wax mould is made special machines are used to pour the Bronze inside it to make the cast. The wax on the outside of the cast then has to be melted away at an extremely high temperature and so the sculpture then goes into the oven! 

After that the sculpture goes through a range of cleaning methods and is then colourised to achieve that beautiful brown bronzed look!

 

From beginning to end making our sculptures is quite a long process but it is worth it because the results are beautiful.