# Sculpture I made: "Hummingbird with Chuparosa Flowers"



## kayjay2C (Sep 22, 2014)

Love it! The flower appears too delicate to support the weight of the 2 birds but obviously it isn't. Can you DIY the casting process or does it require too high a temperature?


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## Bushkill (Feb 15, 2012)

Just awesome!


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## Clayman (Jan 7, 2015)

Just curious, do you have your own foundry? Where are you melting and pouring the metal? Where is harrogate, tn in relation to Nashville?


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## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

Awesome stuff... wish to learn it one day...


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## Riceman (Nov 17, 2014)

Very nice.I did a bit of the LW in College.
Do yo use the silica shell method for the mold?


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## Zapins (Jan 7, 2006)

kayjay2C said:


> Love it! The flower appears too delicate to support the weight of the 2 birds but obviously it isn't. Can you DIY the casting process or does it require too high a temperature?


Yes it is possible to DIY the entire project, which is what I did. I build myself a furnace. There are many ways to power a metal melting furnace, but I generally use propane since it is widely available (a BBQ propane tank, with a high pressure regulator, running about 30 psi of propane) connected to an air blower/fan to raise the temperature in the furnace to around 3400F. The metal melts around 2500-2700F and I pour at a few hundred degrees above that so it doesn't cool too fast.



Clayman said:


> Just curious, do you have your own foundry? Where are you melting and pouring the metal? Where is harrogate, tn in relation to Nashville?


I did build two furnaces, and have a small home foundry setup but I do not own a commercial one.

Harrogate is right next to Cumberland gap, near the trisate point. Though my furnace is back in Connecticut where I used to live. I'm down here finishing up med school, but I go back for the breaks and do a bit of casting when I'm there. 

I have a much smaller electric furnace down here that I have begun to use for casting silver jewelry and smaller bronze pieces. 

Nashville is about 4 hours from here.



Xiaozhuang said:


> Awesome stuff... wish to learn it one day...


AlloyAvenue is a good online forum which helped me build all the equipment I needed and taught me how to cast metal. Lots of resources on there. They are great and will answer all your questions: http://www.alloyavenue.com



Riceman said:


> Very nice.I did a bit of the LW in College.
> Do yo use the silica shell method for the mold?


Yes! I used fused silica for the mold. Its ceramic shell. Really nice stuff, much better than plaster of paris and wire. Any pics of your sculptures?

This is my new furnace, I just finished building it a few months ago:









This was my first furnace:









This is a brown casting wax copy of the original red wax bird:









This is the ceramic shell:









This is what the metal statue looks like after it comes out of the mold.









Cut off from the sprues:









Polished up:









This is what the flowers looked like after they were cast, cleaned up and a few flowers were welded on. After this step I added a patina with liver of sulfur to make the stem black. Then I applied turpentine and bees wax to the outside of the flower to protect it against tarnishing.


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Great stuff. Im glad you showed more of the process. Thanks for sharing.


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## Coralbandit (Feb 25, 2013)

True art and skill.
A beauty to see and see how formed.
Thanks I love metal! 
Furnace #1 looks FUN!


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