< Bronze Sculpture Foundry


                 

     All photos and video on this page taken on a janky iphone 6 + iphone se (first generation) by myself. The below is a documentation of working in a foundry for an 18 Month period in the late 2010s. All artwork remains the the property of the artist. I do not own the copyright. I would however claim, “fair dealings” as this page is non-commercial and intended to be educational.  


All sculptures that are produced in a foundry have many hands working on them throughout every stage of their production. The descriptions and photos below show the small parts I played in their production. For the most part under expert guidance. I worked in every area except mould making - a extremely skilled mould maker and nice guy did all of that. I would have loved to work with him but alas that is how life goes.  
           
Working with Wax

I initally started off in the wax room of the foundry as a complete novice “wax chaser”, working on the wax copies which involves removing seams and repairing imperfections which occur during the wax “paint up” of the expertly made moulds of the artist’s original work. Once this is complete it is necessary to add the wax “sprues” and “cup” ready to allow the molten metal to rush into the void left once the wax has been removed. Later I started doing alot of mould paint ups of many differing sizes.




Ceramics Room

The decision was then made that I would also help with the absolute legends in the “ceramics room”. This is easily the most physically exhasting part of the foundry. Once you have been shut in a pressure washing bay for hours on a freezing cold morning - nothing is hard.

This stage of the lost wax process involves taking the completed wax copies from the wax room, making sure they are as clean as possible and adding pins to areas where air might gather and cause an issue when it comes to pouring the molten metal. Then using “whatever it was” to create a ceramic shell around the wax. This stage requires many layers of “shit” which is then covered evenly with differing grades of sand, and having to allow each layer to dry before adding another..


Once this is complete the shell is made good by wiring to help strengthen it.




The wiring is then followed by a final “paint up” which includes fibreglass to strengthen. The shells are now ready to be fired to remove the wax from inside and to leave a hollow which is a near perfect impression of the wax pulled from the mould.  



Once empty, water is poured into the shells to approximately determine how much bronze is needed. Finally the shells are baked and placed together into a metal box and packed with sand ready for the pour. I did a few pours , expertly guided. There is a comradere during it which is probably one of the few perks of job.



Working with Stainless Steel

The foundry started pouring Stainless Steel whilst I was there. I did the finish on this ammonite. It was the most proud I was of anything I did there.  


Patina

I did very few patinas as I started being shown how to do them just before I left the Foundry. The artist kindly showed me what he wanted on the ammonnite below and how to do it:


I did also get to take part in an on-site repatina of the statue of the footballer, Duncan Edwards, in Dudley town centre.  Which was created by the late great James Butler RA.




Post Pour

once the molten metal has been poured and has cooled. The hideous and laboureous job of getting rid of the ceramic shell starts. This involves an industrial pressure washer and the sculpture being left in a big bath of acid. I do not have alot of photos of this stage because you are cellotaped into a broken dry suit and maarigolds and it is literally impossible to see or hear anything, as you have ear plugs and the most annoying face mask/ helmet on. There is no accessing a camera. This and the physical and continous work meant the below is the only documentation I took.



Preparing bronze for Metal Chasers

This stage involves cutting off the sprues and cups as well as pulling out any nails and drilling out the holes left. The sculptures are then pressure washed again to make sure all the samll bits of ceramic are out, as they can get caught in the sculptures detail. The pieces are then also left in the acid bath. The last job is to burn the acid off so that there are no nasty surprises for the metal chasers.

      

Metal Chasing



I started helping in the metal room towards the end of my time at the foundry. Working under very skilled people. I was there essentially to do the easy stuff. Getting bits ready for them to work on as they had a very heavy work load. I was very excited about this as I have always wanted to weld. Everything I did was under tutelage. I did get to do a variety of jobs and use a load of metal working tools I had never used before. This is obviously another very physical area of the foundry, repetitively using hand tools for hours at a time as well as being very loud and hot.




The above photo shows some of the tools I got to use. The wire brush one was the most satisfying as it quick allows you to turn the dark matte like bronze into shining metal.

Another metal chasing job I was entrusted with was putting patches into sculptures, the process of which can be seen below.




The patch



The weld



Hiding the weld