How to Create a Mold for a Bronze Sculpture

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Gary Mitnik. I'm a sculptor here in Sedona, Arizona, and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. The second time we remake the sculpture is when we pour hot wax in, starting at about two hundred and twenty-five degrees and reducing down in temperatures as the layers build up. We try to get to about no more than a quarter of an inch in thickness. It's kind of like a chocolate bunny if you've ever bought one for Easter. It's the same exact process although this isn't food grade safe. You pull it apart again revealing now, here's the wax and it's hollow as well. That's how we keep the weight down. Otherwise, if this was solid this would probably weigh close to eighty pounds if it was solid. Once it's to this stage, we have a wax person who comes in and they will take off any seam lines that always end up, fix any imperfections in the wax. That's called the wax touch-up. Then they give it to a person like myself and I take it through the gating stages. Gating or sprewing, we take different shapes and sizes of wax, all this is all wax, and we melt it and fuse it onto the bottom. This will get melted off, onto the bottom. Just like a waiter carrying a tray it's under here like this. From there we'll put it on to?this is how we do it. This is a peat pot you make plants from. We'll coat this in wax and this becomes our funnel. We fuse it onto here. So now you've got this, sitting on top of this, on top of a metal plate, and it will support it off of that. What you will see next is in the slurry room is about a third of the way through the entire process."