V.10

Besides the animation, other projects are on course, however,  even that they are projects by itself, all of them are gonna be used in some way for the animation. 

This is the case of this romanic portail from the twon of Verdú, wich is gonaa be casted in bronze.

After taking several pics and pasing to paper all sizes and views, i started to build it with clay, the more I can do with clay the better, is easier to work with it. The clay is casted with plaster and a copy of the pieces with wax is made. This is bee wax and smells like honey :)

Once the wax sculpture is finished is ready to go into a cast to melt and be filled with bronze, howerver, a silicon cast has been made to be able to do more than one copy, is very easy to have problems and ruin the wax piece in just one attempt. This allowed me to try a few techniques.

SILICON CAST PROCESS


Do to the silicon cast you have to imagine a clay sandwitch.

1.Cover the wax sculpture with plastic to protect it from dirt.
2.Put a layer of clay all over the sculpture, (you have to think that all the volume of clay later is gonna be silicon, so here is where you decide how thick you silicon cast is going to be).
3.Cover the clay with plaster, when the plaster is dried remove it like a cover.
4.Remove the clay, the empty space between the wax sculpture and the plaster cover is what is gonna be filled with silicon.

POLIESTER COPY


Once the silicon cast is ready we can make more wax or poliester copies.

Poliester is coloured with pigments and thickened with fiberglass powder. Three layers of poliester and two layers of fiberglass have been used, the result is a very light and resistent copy.

BRONZE COPY


The wax sculpturre cast is in the oven for abaut 20 hours at an average temperature of 650/700 degrees, this allows the wax to melt and empty the cast wich is going to be filled with bronze.

This bronze smelting didn't work very well, the cast had some cracks and the bronze went inside them filling everithing, straight out from the cast the sculpture weighted 20kg, after being polished 15kg. This dark colour is normal in a bronze sculpture when it comes outside de cast, after being polished achieves a goldish colour. 

Wow, that was a though one... next post will involve some dead stuff! Peace out!