The Gibran Sculpture Series
Oh my goodness, making a bronze work of art is such a time-consuming and detailed process! It involves so many specialist craftsmen.
The Investment Process
In the last post, you saw the molten wax going into the silicone mould. When the wax had hardened, it was carefully cut into sections and those sections are used to make the moulds. This time though, the moulds are for the bronze. The wax is covered in lots of coats of a very thin, fine, clay-like mixture.
This produces a series of apparently unconnected bits which look very unlikely! It’s done this way because the clay-like moulds record really fine detail.
So here they are, upside down and full of wax, waiting to go into the kiln…
Sections of wax, coated in ‘investment’ material.
So the next step is to ’empty’ the hard shells to create space for the bronze to flow in. Here they are (below), having been positioned in the oven.
Mould sections in the kiln, waiting to be fired.
Next the oven is brought up to temperature, melting the wax which flows out. What’s left is a lot of empty ‘shells’. Then the shells are baked until they are really hard and can withstand molten bronze.
Speak to us of Freedom – the finished moulds
Here are the finished moulds. These shells are perfect replicas of sections of the original sculpture. At the bottom of the picture you can see something dark green. That’s wax which has been melted out previously. The metal buckets are used to catch any surplus that runs out of the front.
See the finished Speak to us of Freedom sculpture here.
The next post will show the actual casting process.