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BUILDING A BRONZE TABLE Page Two
BUILDING A BRONZE TABLE Page Two
Sculpting detail into the leaves.
Brushing talc onto the foam to fill the pores and give the Cyanoacrylate (Super Glue) a binding agent to adhere to.
Coating the surface with Cyanoacrylate, creating a very hard surface
to work with and preserving and strengthening the overall structure of
the foam. In other words, making it much easier to handle.
Keep in mind that Cyanoacrylate is a toxic compound and should be handled with care.
Using a dental wax pen, I meticulously melt small drops of my custom
wax mixture onto the surface of the hard coated foam. When the wax has been sufficiently built up in all the right areas, and I am feeling confident it is thick enough, I will begin to resculpt and reshape the
wax with all the right amount of detail to my satisfaction.
Look mom, I can sculpt!
After the foam arch that I am posing with on the upper left was finished, I made a silicon mold or an RTV mold of the piece. After the mold cured, I pulled the foam part out of the mold and set it aside for possible future projects. Now I have a silicon rubber mold that I can pour hot wax into to make my finished pieces with. Notice in the image above that, the parts I cast from the rubber mold don't seem to fit. This is on purpose. Notice in the red ovals and circles, the extra blank space of wax? That's my play area. I know it's too small for a sandbox, but it does allow me to nudge the ring in and out a little to make sure the ring is exactly the right size as the bronze will shrink about 2+% give or take. The reason why shrinkage has to be taken into account is because there is going to be a beautiful Italian marble inlay that has to fit EXACTLY into the center flange of that ring.
I felt that it was important to show this image a bit larger so you can appreciate the detail. Here I have assembled a couple of cutting tools that I have modified for my wax work.
Again, a full sized image to show the detail of the finished and fully assembled wax parts ready to go into a new RTV silicon mold. What? Why? Yes, that's correct. This finished part is only made in oder to do final clean-up and detail work. Then a final mold has to be made of the finished piece. Again, I did not get a chance to take pictures of every single step, but I do have a couple of images of the final product below.
So what you see here in these two images is a gold plated bronze table with the very center mozaic (very hard to see) of a couple of sailboats on a river in Europe.
Leg detail.
