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Pouring Wax for Bronze Casting
February 4th, 2012 | Posted in Foundry, Wax tips | 
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Pouring Wax for Bronze Casting
Pouring wax for bronze is a very important part of the process. I’ve had one foundry pour the awful-est (is that a word?) waxes and told me this was due to my highly detailed work. NOT! One reason for bubbles is because of using reclaimed wax (wax that has been used before) rather than virgin wax…….. Jessie Rodriguez, from Roseville, CA, poured me excellent waxes with very few bubbles. I’d highly recommend his foundry services to anyone interested.
Note some of the techniques he shared as seen in the pics below.
Sauce pan with bent edge for pouring in background.
Jessie first heats up the two halves of the silicone mold and then clamps them together and quickly pours the wax in. In the background of the picture you can see the sauce pan that he made just right, with bent edge spout, for pouring into the larger molds. The handle was nice a sturdy to hold while pouring.
Paper cup used to pour wax in small molds.
For small molds Jessie likes to use a waxed paper cup as a pouring cup. Note that he didn’t even wait to put in the nuts and bolts but immediately poured the wax in to the warm mold. This means the wax will flow very nicely into all the detail.
Clamps and bolts used on some molds.
After the wax is already poured in on these small molds, and tapping until bubbles come to the surface (indicating trapped air is coming out which is good so that we don’t have air bubbles to fix later), then he bolts the piece together. For a couple of the very small molds, the clamps were sufficient and no bolts used. However, for most of the small molds, he would bolt them together to tighten up the seam lines (otherwise more work is created with a heavy seam line showing that needs to be removed during chasing out the wax).
VENVM PB wax box comes as little pellets of wax.
Since his waxes came out nearly perfect on my extremely detailed piece (and other waxes he’s made for me have been superb), using the wax he used is a good idea instead of messing around with waxes that may or may not be as good. Here’s the name of the wax, VENVM PB from Westech Products 1242 Enterprise Court, Corona, Ca. 92882, 951-279-4496.
Warming silicone mold with blowdryer.
Here again, he’s warming both sides of the mold. Then he poured some of the detail areas that would tend to get air trapped such as the hair tendrils, face, ruffles of dress and the feet.
Remote detail areas such as the feet are poured first.
Hair tendrils are poured before putting mold halves together.
Clever of him to use a chair that rotates and place molds onto them while rotating the wax in the mold. A mold is very heavy with wax poured in so it takes a strong chair to work well (and strong guy/guys). Notice what an art piece this chair is becoming! All the drips are building up to look quite interesting.:-)
Just look at this decked out wax chair.
I like the idea of taping down tar paper to the floor to catch the wax. Looks like they are due to pull it up and replace though!
Tar papered floor covered in wax.
Warm the mold with halves separate on the large molds and then again after the two halves are put together and bolted together.
Warm mold after halves put together as well.
Sauce pan fit just right in the crock pot for dipping in and getting a good amount of wax to pour into the mold.
Sauce pan works great as ladle for pouring wax.
Pour the wax on one side then the next, and all around. Then rotate the mold on the swivel chair. Tap the mold to release bubbles. First coat is poured at about 200 degrees.
Pours wax on all four sides and rotates mold.
Rotates mold on rotating swivel chair.
Pour out all the liquid wax in the mold, back into the crock pot. Be sure to keep allowing every last drip off wax to pour out from the remotest area of the mold, the head, (which is at the bottom of the mold). If this isn’t done, then the head will end up being filled with more and more wax with each wax layer and remember…… the end product of a good wax should only be 1/4″ thick walls! If the head is cast solid, it can cause shrinking and cracking of the head in the bronze. Very bad news to try and fix that with metal chasing.
Pours out wax after rotating and tapping for awhile.
Next wax layer is poured at about 170 degrees and then next one as well. Then Jessie took a big scoop of wax in the sauce pan and let it sit outside of the crock pot in order to have it cool for the 4th layer. Having the wax cooler will allow the wax to really stick.
Another coat of wax poured at cooler temp.
Final coat is poured with a reclaimed wax. You might have seen the wax in one of the pics in a large rectangular deep fryer. This wax is made up of all kinds of remnants of wax that have been used on other projects, etc. It is a green color but that’s just because of all the different waxes in it making it that color. This coat is put on very cool and thick until 1/4″ wall is achieved.
Allow the mold to cool for several hours. He sometimes sets them outside in the mountain air. There is a fine line, though, between having the mold cool nicely for demolding and getting it too cold and thus brittle for demolding.
Sometimes he will take off one half of the mother mold and maybe pull up just a section of the silicone to help the mold to cool. Later, when removing the silicone from the wax, it’s important to slowly and carefully pull off the silicone without tearing highly detailed thin areas. It seems that with every demold, small bits and pieces of mold are ripped off. By the time the edition of sculpture is part ways through, the mold has degraded some. The more pieces torn off equals the more work in the wax stage to touch up these areas.
Lessons I’ve learned: Be sure and find a wonderful foundry that pours excellent waxes. Take extra care to sculpt in such a way that you know the finished product is something that can be chased out by a foundry worker rather than being so detailed that I need to chase each one. I need to be spending my time making new sculpture for heaven’s sake! I will learn these things one day!
Thanks for viewing my blog and I enjoy your feedback and comments too!
~Tamara
6 Responses to “Pouring Wax for Bronze Casting”
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Wonderful post! And excellent photos too! I’m glad you found someone that does such excellent work for you!
Thanks, I am grateful for the fine work that Jessie does! I still need to scale back detail though because it’s too much work to crisp it all up in the wax.
I’m learning this lesson the hard way, myself also….Loads and loads of time spent wax chasing because it’s too intricate for the foundry and keeping me from producing new work. Thanks for the great info!
Glad I’m not the only one learning! But it’s really hard to change one’s style. I’m having a difficult time changing faces from all the detail. I may always have more detail than most bronzes and therefore be charged more as foundries,especially after trying one out with me and knowing the intricacies.
What a great tip to heat up the mold with a hairdryer! I now do it regularly (and so do others) in our classes at the Foundry at San Jose State.
Yay, that is great Lucy! I know I appreciated the tip when I heard it. Also, another option is to put the mold outside in the sunshine and let it warm up that way.