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Introduction

Techne is Greek for craft, which is the etymological root of technique and technology. This page lays out my theory of craft and how it works out in practice. It discusses how I arrived at bronze casting, my attitude towards bronze casting and artisanship in general, and a little about the homemade tools that make it possible for me cast bronze. There are plenty of webpages and books that show the basic steps of lost-wax bronze casting. You won't find this to be a rigorous how-to page, but I sincerely hope that you'll find here some inspiration to tackle a big art project yourself.

In 2003 I decided to direct my focus to the figure, and so at once the decision to make about which materials to use came to the fore. I settled on bronze and began to dream about building my own foundry. A quick internet search turned up many small home made foundry webpages and I believed that it could be possible to build my own. A year later, after a ferocious level of effort I poured my first successful casting, a portrait bust commissioned by a local patron. That event marked an important milestone in an exciting and ongoing creative journey.

Why go through the expense, frustration, and personal risk to build a foundry when the country is dotted with large and very competent commercial foundries eager to serve sculptors? Because in order to make bronze a means of expression and not merely a means of preservation it would be necessary for me to work through each stage of the process. Sculpture should remind us that we have a body as well as a mind, so why not lay our hands on the materials directly? Intimate hands-on involvement from beginning to end preserves the flow of the creative process and allows the possibility for changes based on spontaneous inspiration. Experience with bronze has informed my eye and hand, and experimentation with bronze has led to interesting results. Each step along the way has presented steep challenges requiring solutions beyond my first hand experience but I have not quit and I can truly call the results all my own.

Bronze has been worked by men for several millennia. It was one of the first materials to be industrialized, and as such developed specialized trades early on. Centuries ago artists settled on creating a clay original to be handed over to specialists for casting into bronze. This in a sense made the artist a specialist as well, one who delegates or defers to other specialists or experts. This working model has grown more refined and widespread due to the complete industrialization of society.

A craft is a body of knowledge, and a tradition is an argument extended over time.1 A craft tradition is working towards the completion and perfection of that knowledge, towards its ideal. My goal is not to take a modern approach, but to continue this tradition, and it's the main reason why I decided to build my own foundry. This is what I mean by a more comprehensive view.

I have immersed myself in the tradition of the figure in bronze, a venerable one that has been advanced by some of the greatest artists the West has produced. I have taken the ancient Greeks as a prime source of inspiration. The master of any craft tradition knows what important works have come before that brought the craft tradition to a new level of development closer to its perfection. There have been many discoveries of ancient bronzes in the last two hundred years which means that today there are more ancient bronzes available to study than the previous 1000 years or more. I have looked at these as closely as my circumstances allow for inspiration for my own work. I have also been studying how my countrymen have approached the classical tradition. New England is blessed with a great number classical works by Americans and I look to them both for inspiration and as a challenge to meet and exceed. After I have studied the tradition, I hope like the master, I may be capable of imaginatively engaging the tradition and in exceptional cases advance it to a higher state of perfection.

Materials selection: a rational approach

Modern sculptors have the complete material world available for producing work. Artists are constantly searching for new media to work in. The variety of modern media used in the contemporary scene is astonishing and just presents a steep challenge to any artist who is sensitive about the formal implications of choosing any particular medium in which to work. It's a challenge because there are so many choices and each choice has implications. I think the best way to deal with the overwhelming number of options is to begin with a rational discussion of what mechanical and formal qualities a material will bring to the project. The matrix presented below is something I've learned from working with architects who often are forced to decide about what materials to use based on the mechanical properties, cost, and availability.

Material	Tensile Strength	Compression Strength	Finish Quality	Cost	Weathering + Durability	Comments
Concrete	Brittle, needs reinforcing	Excellent	Check a concrete sidewalk for typical condition	Affordable, no special tools req'd	Excellent, provided it's correctly used	Aggregate size restricts detail.
Steel	Excellent	Excellent	Very mallable	Affordable	Alloy selection critical	Oxidizes to a powder commonly known as Rust
Plastic	Excellent compared to its weight	Excellent compared to its weight	Very mallable	May depend on special equipment + workspace	U.V. light breaks it down	Safest to use it in an indoor environment
Aluminum	Excellent	Excellent	Very mallable	Cheapest in ignot form, weldable	Vunerable in harsh conditions, will react with ferrous metals	Oxidizes to a gray, lightweight compared to bronze + steel
Bronze	Excellent	Excellent	Very mallable	Cheapest in ignot form, weldable	Very durable, can be buried for millenia
Silver	Excellent	Excellent	Very mallable	Precious	Durable, but does corrode	Will oxidize to black, the well known polish color requires high maintenance
Gold	Excellent	Requires alloying	Shiny	Precious	Noble metal	Too expensive to be practical
Glass	Brittle	Brittle, but can be better than expected	Depends on method	Requires high-overhead shop	Thin construction is vunerable, but can be buried for millenia	Heavy castings are durable
Ceramics	Brittle	Brittle	Very mallable	Affordable	Thin construction is vunerable, but can be buried for millenia	Unsuitable for outdoors
Plaster	Brittle	Brittle	Average	Affordable	Vunerable to moisture	Unsuitable for outdoors. Exceptions include architectural terra-cotta + mosaic
Wood	Excellent in one direction	Can be good	Very mallable	Affordable	Subject to rot	Unsuitable for outdoors. Must be kept dry.

My ratings for each category are not taken from scientific tests or other databases though I'm sure enough research could turn up standards with which to measure each material. I've rated them relative to one another with the performance requirement being how they would work in a work of art that must only hold itself together and nothing else. For example, I've looked at how concrete and steel would perform as materials for sculpture, and not as materials for building bridges and skyscrapers, applications for which concrete and steel has no peer. I'm also considering how these materials would work with a figure scale object. While these are not the only materials available, they could all be used in similar projects in one way or another, either together or in combination. The intent to the matrix is to show that some materials are good at some things and not at others and to compare one with the other in terms of performance.
I chose bronze because it outperforms the competition. It casts beautifully, machines easily, oxidizes to gorgeous colors, has excellent compression strength and tensile strength, and is readily available and affordable. Few other materials have all these qualities all together and at once. Therefore bronze has been the obvious choice for many important projects over the centuries and it has acquired a certain gravitas because of its association with major works.
Equipment and Methods
A significant part of the challenge of working in bronze has been acquiring the requisite technical knowledge and equipment. I have been collecting technical manuals up to 100 years old, each one with its own strength and weakness. My largest and most important equipment is hand made, either by myself or others.
	Here is my de-waxing kiln prior to its very first firing. It was designed and built by me mostly using materials available at the local hardware store. The exception is the insulation, a special blanket that is rated to withstand temperatures over 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. It is made in the United States and is innovative because it is not a dangerous carcinogen like asbestos is. The construction is very lightweight for easy mobility. It has been dismantled to a very compact size for storage and will be rebuilt in a more efficient configuration using the same materials.

	Here is the propane burner for my kiln. This elegant and powerful tool was hand made by Mr. Rex Price of Hybridburners.com in Georgia. Deceptively simple, subtly refined, it easily heats my de-waxing kiln. I had to sign a letter of indemnification to get it.

	Here are several ceramic molds being prepared to receive molten bronze.

	Color can be an indicator of temperature because it changes as the temperature rises. When the heat is ready to be poured the crucible is yellow, and as it cools, it changes to cherry red, then back to its normal black. Here are those same three molds just after the pour. The metal still glows orange. The propane flame that melts the bronze is blue because the propane flame is a much higher temperature than a red flame. I find this interesting because when painters talk about color, red is traditionally called a warm color, and blue a cool color which is the reverse of what a scientist might say.

	Moving the crucible full of molten bronze to the pouring shank in preparation for pouring. I call my furnace a Gingery furnace because it closely follows a design published by David Gingery in his book "How to build a crucible melting furnace".2 Copies of the book can still be found. According to the man who sold me my furnace, it was built by a sculpture professor and a graduate student at a major art school in Boston. They used it a little bit, then it was sold to a student who was taking a night course in casting at the school. He never used it and advertised it for sale in the "Plumbing and Heating" section of a local used item classified magazine, where I found it. I bought it and it works just fine. The furnace and the de-waxing oven run on bottled propane bought from the local hardware store.

	Here is the furnace in action. The two cylinders are my ingot molds, and the two pieces of bronze are charges waiting to be dropped in. They're on the lid to be dried. Under normal atmospheric conditions there will be trace amounts of moisture present on these items, and if molten metal comes in contact with the moisture steam will be instantly produced which will fling globs of metal any which way. The sand on the floor serves a similar purpose because the concrete floor also contains moisture, and a glob of molten metal sitting on it will also produce dangerously active steam. The bronze has copper wire tied to it to help lower the charge into the crucible when the bronze already inside has melted. The last time I used this technique the wire came undone and the charge dropped in like a golf ball landing in a tub of mashed potatoes, a very scary experience. I have since bought a big pair of channel lock pliers to grasp the charge with and I no longer use wire.
I use the lost-wax process to cast. This process was known by the ancients and has not changed in principal though new materials have changed the execution quite a bit. An extraordinary amount of detail from the original piece can be preserved using this method. It is not uncommon to use harsh abrasive methods to strip ceramic shell, but methods such as sandblasting and wire brushing destroy subtle character that was present in the original model. Sandblasting is typically chosen because it is quick. I go to great lengths to remove the shell without resorting to hard mechanical stripping methods that obliterate detail. I have found gentle methods that preserve the finish of the original down to the last fingerprint. It is the development of personal techniques that serve the goals of the art which significantly contributes to my goal of making bronze my medium of self expression.
Having completed successfully a couple of bronze pieces I no longer view the clay originals and wax reproductions the same way. I am looking to bring each piece through to the end with a distinctive character and my experience thus far will help guide that mission. I can say that casting my own work has informed what I do and I am excited about the new things I will learn that will help inform my work and give each piece special personality. If you're interested in seeing the work in person, please send me an email with your contact information to be added to my mailing list and I'll keep you posted with exciting public events and new articles online such as this one.
Sarah Vincent provided editorial support for this article, for which I am very grateful.
Notes: 1. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre, University of Notre Dame Press 1989. 2. Building a Gas Fired Crucible Furnace by David J. Gingery, David T. Gingery publisher 1988.