How to cast a bronze sculpture
This work by Carmen Rio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Learning goal
- To acquire useful vocabulary in order to be able to describe the process of lost wax bronze casting.
To achieve that goal, you should become familiar with the words in the resource, paying special attention to those included in the exercises. The interactive activities provide feedback so that you can evaluate your performance.
Watch the video
Watch the video "How to make bronze sculptures - lost wax bronze casting", posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVe3VeQfyzw by theapgallery, and then do the activities below. If you have trouble following the video, you can access the script by clicking here.
A note on "chasing"
One of the steps in bronze casting is chasing the bronze sculpture. Do you understand what that is?
The Encyclopedia Britannica (http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/107810/chasing), gives the following definition of chasing:
"metalwork technique used to define or refine the forms of a surface design and to bring them to the height of relief required. The metal is worked from the front by hammering with various tools that raise, depress, or push aside the metal without removing any from the surface (except when the term chasing, instead of the more appropriate term chiselling, is used to describe the removal of surplus metal from objects after casting).
Chasing is the opposite of embossing, or repoussé, in which the metal is worked from the back to give a higher relief."
The Spanish equivalent of "chase" would be grabar, adornar grabando, cincelar (http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-spanish/chase)
Order the steps
Order the stages in the process of casting a bronze sculpture by dragging the description of each of the steps to the right number. To help you, the first and last steps have already been given.
Complete the text
The following text describes the initial phases of the process of lost wax bronze casting. Fill in the gaps using words from the drop down menu, taking into account that you may need the same word more than once, and that there are a few words you are not going to need.
To start with, the original sculpture is
with rubber. When the rubber
, the sculpture is
from it, thus leaving a negative replica or
in the hardened rubber. After that, the rubber
is covered in
, and wax is
into the
part of the rubber mold. Once the wax
, the
and the rubber are
to obtain the wax positive replica of the original piece.
Then, wax sticks are
onto the wax positive replica to form channels which will allow the
bronze to flow in and the gases to escape. Later, the wax reproduction is
in a resin
and in sand alternatively to form the ceramic shell.