Case Study: How we cast bronze “Fighting Typhoon”
Sculpture Name Fighting Typhoon Artists Xiang Long; Yunke Qian; Cheng Zhu; Qingzhu Meng Material Silicone Bronze Measurement 14 feet tall tall Casting Method Bronze casting as one piece Background: Typhoon occurring in between summer and spring every year is very common in south east China. It’s extremely destructive like hurricane attaching Florida, US. This statue is for memorizing people who participating in fighting against typhoon and rescuing civilians in the natural disaster. The tense atmosphere can be clearly seen from this sculpture and you can view this statue from any angle you want. This is another feature of this work. As a leading bronze sculpture foundry in China, Tany Foundry has rich experience on casting monumental sculptures. Production Process: it’s clear that this is a sculpture with complicated structure and details. It’s difficult to cast figures separately and assembly them later because there is no clear partition line between figures and partial casting could cause damage to the final visual effect. Therefore, we decide to cast this sculpture as a whole piece. Here is the workflow: Fiberglass pattern – Making silicone mould – Wax mould – Internal investment (refractory like plaster ) – Refining wax mould – External investment – Heating, Kiln burnout – Bronze pouring – Cleaning, sand blasting – Removing pouring system and casting trace – Finishing, refining – Polishing – Patination The first step is to make a silicone mould from the fiberglass pattern. Duo to the size of the statue, we have to make separate silicone moulds according to its structure and add a plaster jacket outside of silicone. The purpose of the plaster jacket is to avoid silicone mould distortion. This is important because severe distortion may cause the wax mould parts can’t fit well with each other. After the silicone moulds are prepared, we create wax moulds by brushing hot liquid wax onto the silicone. Just like the silicone moulds, we create wax mould separately and assembly them together afterwards. Next, we work with artists closely to refine the finished wax work. One of the challenges is the work has to reflect the “muddy feeling” of those figure who were fighting against the typhoon very hard. To handle this issue, we come up with an idea: spraying a little bit of molten wax onto the wax figure. And, Bingo! Those figures now look muddy and tired. This small technique greatly captures the spirit of this sculpture. After the wax mould is finished, now we do the investment job by applying refractory onto the waxwork. Duo to the size of this project, we spend total SEVEN days to burnout and firing. The pour is very successful and we got a beautiful look sculpture. The work of cleaning the refractory is worth of great attention because any carelessness would cause damage the sculpture finish. Then we cut the sprues (the pouring system) and refining sculpture’s finish. Previously, our engineer design those sprues at those unnoticeable places so this work doesn’t take long. The hard part is patination, the artists spend quite a few time to figure out the “right tone” for this statue and we assist them do the patination with different solution. Finally, artists decide using reddish dark brown color and our patinar finish the job. Hi guys, I’d like to hear your comments mu post and feel free to let me know if you have any...
Read MoreHow to Make Pattern for Foundry Use
As an sculptor, you create a sculpture and foundry help you reproduce your work with another medium, usually a type of metal such as bronze, aluminum, zinc, etc. To help an art foundry finish their job, a sculptor needs to provide them with an original work in a proper form. We call the original work you give foundry a master pattern. Usually, a pattern is all a foundry need to cast metal. Generally, master pattern can be made with two ways. For small scale project, a sculptor can create the pattern himself. We will discuss the material and way to create pattern in next articles. Or For large scale project, a sculptor only need to sculpt a scale Maquette, which is a small preliminary model, and let the foundry know how large you want the maquette to scale up. As far as the foundry knows the size of the final sculpture, they have two options to enlarge it, by manual or by a CNC router. There are pros and cons of these two ways. ProsCons Traditional wayIt can capture details of the original work. Sometimes it’s more economical than a CNC router. (its material is clay and it’s reusable)It’s time consuming. Unless the enlargement is done by professional patternmaking team, the accuracy of scaled sculpture can’t be guaranteed. CNC RouterIt’s faster. ( actually, it depends on the type of CNC router ) The accuracy of scaled enlargement is generally guaranteed. For those sculptures requiring very fine details, the machine may not carve it. Sometimes it’s expensive especially when you use pricy polyurethane. Below are two examples using these two methods. Any comments or ideas about pattern making is highly appreciated. If you have any question about how to make pattern, feel free to let me know. (Owen...
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FAQ Why Tany Sculpture Foundry? There are several reasons that you should consider Tany Foundry as your partner. We are a full service foundry and provide you with the following service Mold making: silicone mold making; plaster mold making; fiberglass mold making Bronze casting, aluminum casting, stainless steel casting Bronze fabrication; stainless steel fabrication; high/mirror polishing Metal Work: welding, assembling, polishing Finishing & Patina Digital Enlargement/Reduction: CNC milling, Rapid Prototyping Logistics service: door to door shipping arrangement Reliability: our foundry has been in this industry for over 30 years and we have cast thousands of sculpture works for sculptors around world. Your sculpture will be assigned with a project manager and he will take care of everything from the beginning to the end and reports to your about the whole progress. Affordability: we’ve been improving casting techniques and methods to save cost and keep our price competitive. We believe this would make your sculpture project go easier and smoother. We believe good artwork shouldn’t be luxury. How can I start a project? l We have several options for your choose. l Send us a pattern of your work and we do the rest of the work. The pattern is preferred using plaster or fiberglass. These materials are suitable for long distance transportation. l Send us the silicone or plaster mold of your work and we will do the rest of the job. Please pack the mold in strong box for safety shipping purpose. l Scan your work with a laser scanner and send us the digital file. Let us know the size of the sculpture you want us to cast and we will use the digital file to make the pattern of the wanted size and do metal casting. In this way, you can also send us the maquette and we can do the scanning for you. Do I need to pay deposit to start a project? How much? Yes, after all details of the sculpture project have been decided by both parties, we will sign a contract with you and a certain amount of deposit is to be made for starting the project. The amount of the deposit is as specified in the contract. How long will it take for you to produce a bronze sculpture? Say, a life-sized figure. The time to complete a sculpture varies depending on some factors: the scale of the project, its complexity, its specific requirement, etc. Generally speaking, it takes around 25 working days to cast a life-sized bronze figure upon our receiving your pattern. How will you handle my pattern after receiving it ? Your pattern (original work) will be carefully used and kept during the casting process and we will ship the finished sculpture together with the pattern back to you. We view the pattern as your important property and will never use it for other purpose I heard that there are copyright infringements occurring in China and I am very concerned about that. How do you guarantee my copyright would be copycatted in China ? First of all, we value the creativity of artists and are strongly opposing any copyright infringement activity. We have been working closely with artists to protect their copyright. In our foundry, your sculpture patterns, molds or digital representation will be closely guarded and won’t be forwarded to a third party without your prior written permission. We...
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