Dream Boat: Copper Sculpture Fabrication

Bronze and copper is often used for sculpture fabrication. Tany Foundry has a team of professional and very experienced artisan.

Copper, which is of great extension ability under high temperature, is an excellent material for art fabrication. Before the plastic is invented, copper is one of the most used materials for making everyday utensil: bowl, table, etc. Now plastic and other new material take place of copper but copper successfully find its way into modern art and ornament purpose.

Compared with bronze casting, it’s relatively easier to explain how copper fabrication works.

To put it simple, fabrication is forming the metal into the desired shape with multiple steps:  cutting, welding, bending, finishing, polishing, assembling and other methods. Here is a case of Tany Foundry copper fabrication sculpture.

This sculpture is called dream boat which is fabricated with copper, 45 feet long. Overall, the sculpture is made up of two parts, the wave like copper tubes and the curved deck.

Here are basic steps how we fabricate it.

•    Fabricate an armature with galvanized steel, which works as a skeleton and support of the whole sculpture. We have to make sure the armature is very strong because whole sculpture weights on it.
•    Prepare copper sheets of 2MM thick and weld them together to the curve required in the drawing and weld them with the armature.
•    Bending copper tubes an welding tubes together to the desired length. This is a very important step in the whole process because the tube shape wave is the major visual feature of this work. The patterns of the wave are carefully designed. We lay the drawing on grounds and shape bronze tubes rigidly following the pattern.
•    Mount the bent copper tubes onto the finished frame.
•    Fix individual bronze tubes together welding and bolts.
•    Finishing and Patina.

Here are some pictures of this project.

Please let me know if you have any question about the fabrication process. Please click here.