Bronze Toothless Cast

For the first time seriously carving anything and finishing it, I'm quite proud of myself! I see a lot of room for improvement, but I'm no less impressed with the outcome!

The process we used is called "loss foam" casting.
For the process of the casting, see my sta.sh gallery: sta.sh/227lqxgsbyyj?edit=1

My fiance (the guy with the red hair that's tied back in the process gallery), came home from school on a Tuesday afternoon and said excitedly that he had a project I needed to get done by Friday morning! When he explained to me that the blacksmithing department wanted to try a new casting process and how it worked, I think I was more excited than he was!

Toothless was carefully carved from pink insulation foam that can be bought at hardware stores, with a hobby knife set. Seriously, that pink stuff gets everywhere. With a heated blade or small metal pick held over a candle flame, the foam melts before the blade/pick even touches it! The heat smooths out a lot of edgier areas and hard-to-reach pits, such as under Toothless' head or "ears." I used the heated pick to make my signature and the date underneath.
He was then packed tightly inside an oil-bonded sand, making sure that the sand was even packed in the smallest crevices. He was set upside down in a "bucket" of sand with other foam carvings, and Toothless and the other carvings had a rectangular piece of foam set on top, touching the carved foam base, and sticking out of the top of the sand just a little bit. These pieces of foam on top acted like a spout for the molten bronze.
Then the bronze was heated, and my fiance and his friend carefully poured molten bronze into the foam spouts. The heat was so intense, that the foam essentially vaporized, leaving a cavity in the oil-bonded sand for the molten bronze to fill. The scary part was when the oil in the sand was on fire for longer than expected. I and some others were afraid that was a bad sign, and that the cavities in the sand might have been ruined ...
With metal tongs, Toothless and the other casts were pulled out from the sand and plunged into a bucket of water. That was an amazing moment to see that it worked! The now-metal spout under Toothless' base was cut off, and he was wire-brushed to clean his surfaces. Excess bronze and cut-off bronze was gathered and re-melted into a new ingot for future use, and the sand that wasn't charred black was reuseable. 

I and my fiance are so happy how he turned out! It took a lot of work, and it was so much fun!
If I feel comfortable enough in the future with carving and casting, I might open bronze-cast commissions! For now, I'll be honing my skill and learning new techniques!

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