The Application of Gold Gilding in Sculpture
Gold is featured by its unique luster. For those sculptures which need golden flashy finish, it’s a good solution to use gold gilding. The gold gilt sculptures not only look great, but also can keep its luster for quite a long time because the chemical property of gold allows it to counteract oxidation. Gilt sculpture is also suitable for public art because it get along well with all kinds of weather conditions: rain, sunlight, wind, fox, etc. We gilt a group of athletics sculptures 10 years ago and they look just like brand new now. Please view the pictures below. The basic steps of gold gilding technique includes the following steps: Prepare for gold leaf; Apply base coating; Attach gold leaf onto sculpture surface; Make necessary refinement with brush; Apply a layer of transparent protective coating onto the gold finish. It requires practice to master the skill of gilding. Below is some of our past projects of gilding. I look forward to your comments and feel free to let me know if you have any technical question. ...
read moreTips on Making Great Wax Mould for Bronze Casting (2)
This article explores how to make wax mould with irritation approach and demonstrate a case study using this technique. Below is a case of using irritation technique to make wax mould. Irritation approach is suitable for producing small scale sculpture with height around 20 inches. Step 1: pour molten wax into silicone mold, which is usually with a plaster jacket. Spin and shake the silicone mould slowly and steadily to make the molten wax flow freely onto all silicone mould surface. Step2: place the silicone mould still for while and wait wax to cool a little bit and irritate the liquid wax. The wax left in the silicone mould will solidify and form the wax mould. The thickness of current wax mould is very thin so you will repeat the process described above a couple of times to get the desired thickness. To make the thickness of wax mould consistent, it’s important to spin and shake the silicon mould a little bit so liquid wax can capture every details of the sculpture. Step 3: take off the wax mould from the silicone mould carefully to avoid any damage on wax occurring. Exam carefully the wax mould to check if there is any imperfection on the surface. Using a brush pen to dip molten wax onto those places where wax layer is very thin. The pro of the irritation approach is the partition line is not clear and easy to remove. Please let me know if you have any question or any comments by clicking here...
read moreIntroduction and Comparison of Bronze Casting
It’s helpful for sculptors to understand some commonly used bronze casting techniques. This can help artists to take technical factors into consideration when they are creating sculptures. I have seen some well sculpted work looks not so good because choosing a wrong technical approach. I plan to write a series articles on this topic . This series well be composed of several parts: a brief introduction on different casting techniques, their pros and cons, their suitable application and best practice, economical consideration on choosing one of them and some case study. I will try to make myself clear and easy to understand. Your comments would be the biggest support for me....
read moreTips on Making Great Wax Mould for Bronze Casting (1)
Lost wax technique is a suitable way for casting bronze sculpture which has complex structure and delicate texture. One of the benefit of lost wax technique is it provides sculptor an opportunity to refine or improve the wax work before bronze casting. The key factor of a successful bronze casting using this technique is to make excellent wax mould. The quality of wax mould affects the quality of bronze casting directly and there are two things to consider for making good wax mould. (1) Ways of forming wax mould (2) Using proper type of wax. Generally speaking, there are three basic approach of making wax mould. Compressing: put wax block into a compressing mold make from metal, rubber or plaster and just compress it to generate the desired shape. This is a quick way to make multiple copies of wax mould. Wax mould made in this way is usually of high quality, showing clear outline and details. Irrigation. It’s hard to use compressing way to form some shape such as human bust. There where irrigation way stands. Pour molten wax into a negative mould (usually silicone ) and keep it cool for a while until the wax wall forms and then let go the molten wax. By this, we can get a wax mould without seam. This technique is relatively hard to operate because you must be very sensitive to wax temperature. Brushing. For those sculpture with simple shape, brushing is a good way. It’s simple to operate. Use a brush to dip into molten wax and brush onto a negative mould to form positive wax mould. Make sure brushing all over around and the thickness of wax mould consistent. We will talk about the details about tips on making good wax moulds in the next few articles. (Owen...
read moreCase Study of Lost Wax Casting for Bronze Sculpture
Lost wax technique is one of the most used methods to cast metal sculpture. It has a very long history. This technique can be defined as a process by which a metal (such as silver, gold, brass or bronze) sculpture is cast from an artist’s sculpture as a wax mould. Here is a case of a sculptures made from lost wax technique in ancient China to show how far lost wax technique can go. This piece is called Zeng Houyi Bowl for holding liquor. The original piece was made around 500 B.C. It was owned by a local king of Ancient China. The most visible character of this piece is its extremely complicated patterns. These are 102 dragons pattern on this 16.5 inch tall works. Considering the time (500 B.C), it’s very unbelievable our ancestors were capable to use lost wax so well. The picture shown is our replica and to be honest, our works is still not as intricate as the original piece. No matter how complicated the sculpture is, there are two basic methods to make wax mould. Direct way: sculptor carves on a wax block directly to make the desired shape. This is a onetime mould because it can only be used once. Indirect way: the wax mold is made from a negative silicone rubber mold which is made from a sculptor’s original piece (clay, plaster, resin etc) The quality of wax work affects the final bronze directly so a wax mold needs a little bit refining after coming out. The thickness of the bronze is controlled by the thickness of wax work so it’s important to keep wax thickness consistent. Inconsistency of wax work may lead to fault or imperfection on the casting duo to the different shrinkage rate of different parts. Though rarely used in large scale sculpture, lost wax is warmly welcome because it’s very suitable for small and intricate piece such as life size figure, bust, etc. The wax used for making the mold varies and I plan to write another post on this topic. Below is a simple demonstration on how a resin master pattern become into a bronze bust. I’ll write a series articles about how to apply lost wax technique to create wonderful bronze sculptures and please let me know if you have any question. Any comment is highly appreciated. ( by Owen...
read moreCase 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...
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...
read moreFAQ
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...
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