Bronze Hands Lost Wax Project

i've got it in my inbox from thread notifications. thanks jason! i'll keep your patina secrets closely guarded

 

Home stretch, guys! LOS worked great! But somethings off with my first hand. I had already patinaed and waxed it so I had to get rid of the wax coating so I kilned the hand at about 1000 for an hour. Smoked that wax off but I’m thinking the heat treatment maybe annealed parts of the hand because there are some copper colored patches in the bronze. Any idea what caused this and how to remedy it?

 

Just found this online...
What is “pickle”???

 

If you want them to look like they came from the same human, bead blast both of them and start over. Patina them as a pair.

 

That’ll be a negative, ghost rider. My makeshift sand blaster would take too long to do that. Plus I’ve developed my own progressive los patina process that should make matching the darkness pretty straight forward.
I’ve found a few recipes for copper plating removal. This “super pickle” process looks promising. almost tempted to try to recreate the kiln based copper plating issue on one of my spare failures to test the pickle process before selling the farm on it. Esp cause all the processes I’ve seen so far are based on brass instead of bronze.

 

Grab a 6pack of beer and find a powder coater. Have them bead blast them for you. They would take me all of 10mins in my cabinet....
Why would you try to attempt anything out of the norm at this point? Copper plate removal? Really?
Patina is NOT the same as plating.

 

The copper plating was there before the patina, brother, like I said from the re-kilning the hand to burn off the wax I had already applied in preparation for the patina. The copper just stuck out a ton more after the LoS treatment cause it reacted differently to copper than bronze. glad you’ve got a sweet setup to blast in.

 

I just wouldn't trust any chick with a fat pickle like that on youtube! The process removes copper. Uh that can't be a good idea when bronze is 94% copper.

 

Well you can suck egg Debbie doubter Jason, cause it worked. worked like a champ. I used ph down pool chemicals, hydrogen peroxide, and white vinegar and it stripped nearly all of the copper plating off in about 45 minutes. The rest came of easily with a Brass dremel brush. Then re-patina’ed it with my personal patina dipping process and ended up making it match like a pro. Then, Got both hands bowling alley waxed tonight with my own custom process...
- feeling like a boss for my first project...
Give or take 8 months and 2 grand of investment XD
DONE! My wife got a glass and golden brass shadow box to mount them in... final pics to come!


...now my next project.... bronze singing bowl bell. #prayforme #gluttonforpunishment

 

Did you actually copper electro plate these somewhere and I missed it??
They look great in that last photo.

 

Yeah I missed the plating too?

That's the way these projects go. 8 months is pretty fast. Since you have to teach yourself everything from scratch and research where to get everything from. But that sweet sense of satisfaction at the end... hmm hmm.

 

8 months of something new and different.... with a tangible and valued result at the end. Sounds like an adventure to me!

Pete

 

definitely a worthy investment of time! the glass shadow box for displaying is being delivered today. now I've just gotta finish putting together the progress video before we give them to her on Aug 30th.

Apparently, the copper "skin" came as a result from me reheating the bronze hand that i already coated in wax to burn off the wax. knucklehead me ran it too hot at 1000 for an hour, causing me to have to do more work to get the uniform golden color back. From what I've read both brass and bronze can develop a copper skin coating from annealing when you heat them to certain temperatures... I'm guessing it has something to do with the heat and oxidization around the surface that somehow separates alittle of the copper out of the bronze.

the pickling solution worked great and didn't harm the bronze itself, just ate up the thin copper coating. the LOS really causes the copper to pop out whereas before LOS it was almost unnoticable. After the pickle dip, i did a fresh round of LOS on it, and there were a few small areas that still had some copper skin, so i took all the patina back off, and used a brass dremel bit to take off the remaining copper spots. then did a 3rd round of LOS and buffed out the highlights. LOS was the right call, Jason, esp because one of the hands has deeper details in the wrinkles, so for the shallower detailed hand i was extra gentle with brushing out the highlights to keep as much of the detail visible, and they look much closer to each other now.

 

Patinas are a whole other world unto themselves. Casting is one thing but patination is witchcraft.

 

Playing with los was fun. So cool seeing such a fast reaction. At this point I love anything that doesn’t take exorbitant amounts of time. I deviated from Jason’s secret technique and developed my own that worked fast and easy and gave me a lot of control over the depth of the color. Loving the results!

 

That right! IF I don't see a PM, you and I will have words!

 

Hahahahaha of course, my dudes. I won’t even delete this post in case someone wants to try it later.
I used euro tools xl gel los.
I filled a plastic bin with scalding hot water and using a test piece of everdur kept added los little by little till I got a strong enough patina reaction without it being overkill. The less los the slower the process but more control over final color. I also had a fresh water bucket of room temp water setup. Then with the bronze also at room temp I put the hands in, full submersion. I continually kept the solution agitated and the hands moving around to make sure exposure was uniform. Then I pulled them out to check progress every 10- 15 seconds. When they start to approach final coloring. I would pull them out and give them a good rinse in the water bath to slow the reaction to a crawl, and inspect them closer. And if I wanted more patina I did another 10 second dip, repeatedly rotating between the los and water baths till I was happy. Then a final rinse in a water&baking soda mix to bring los reaction to a full stop.
For highlighting work I used a 120 grit buffing polishing dremel wheel on a slow rpm and VERY carefully gave the whole piece a gentle once over so as not to lose any patina in the cracks. A higher grit wheel would probably create a more glossy look but the 120 gave a slightly more matted finish which I was going for.
That’s pretty much it. Worked for me, but then again it was my first time playing with los so take that for what it’s worth.


Also I found this helpful chart of annealing points of various metals that helped me figure out my copper issue if anyone’s interested: https://www.nancylthamilton.com/wp-...-Metals-Annealing-Temperatures-for-Metals.pdf

 

Also our shadow box glass display case came in tonight. We’re so pumped at how it looks. She’s going to love it!

 

Bravo!