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| Beautiful old school building converted to become Northwest Art Casting's home. |
Owner, Roy, receives, measures, photographs and bids incoming work. |
A heavy waxed paper collar inserted before silicon rubber is painted on in several layers to make a mold. |
Several pieces are being molded here, in the old gym space in the basement of the building. |
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| Arms and legs cut off the sculpture and molded separately |
Several layers of plaster applied to the silicone mold to give support. Here the mold lies open |
Fitted back together to maintain it's shape for storage |
Looking into the bottom where wax will be poured in the next step. |
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| Four layers of wax poured into the silicone mold. |
The mold is opened and the wax figure removed and tooled, |
working with an electric tool, wax chasers clean, repair, smooth, replace detail, cut windows, etc. |
preparing the wax to be sprued, attaching the waxes to a cup with sprue wax to m ake the channels for the metal to reach all parts of the piece. |
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| Eight coats of slurry are then applied with 24 hours of drying time between each coat to make a thick ceramic shell around the wac. |
At any particular time there is a room of pieces in progress. |
This piece, the head of a dog, is ready for another coat. |
Forms are no longer recognizable with the wax channels and coats of porcelain. |
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| Wax is then burned out of the mold in this giant oven at 1500 degrees leaving the cavity for the bronze. |
molds, heated to 2000 degrees, are then filled with molten bronze by space visitors. |
Full molds, sculptures ready to be released from the shell |
Sledge and jack hammers are used to carefully chip the shell off. |
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| Raw bronze sculpture, straight from the mold |
the sprus (channels) remaining after the sculpture has been cut free. |
New pieces are sand blasted |
and then to the grinding wheel for fine tuning. |
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| metal tooling |
cutting off sprus, or channels. |
welding pieces together |
polished bronze |
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| Patinas applied sometimes look as though the piece is painted |
Patina being applied to this large cougar |
complex patina in many colors |
a separate room devoted to the patina process |
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| Many sculptures are mounted on wood stands before shipping |
the shipping room is the old stage in the basement of the school building. |
Arrival of new pieces are a thrill to the sculptor, from plasteline to bronze--like magic. |
Some pieces stay on-site to guard the foundry. |
