Cast Bronze Gas Lanterns

Here we go again! Not being the type that can really sit still, I've been chewing on an idea that I want to try! Owing to my recent good fortune casting the little jewelry box in bronze, I want to try something bigger and more complicated. While I did enjoy building that set of gas lanterns out of steel, it's not really where I want to take this whole gas lighting thing. I want to create extraordinary gas lighting that will survive easily along the seaside. Stainless steel is too industrial and sterile for my taste so this could only mean BRONZE! For this project, I have envisioned crafting the frame from Chavant LeBeauTouche' in a treelike appearance with small leafy details. From there, a silicone mold will be made and the wax poured and shelled just like the little jewelry box. I haven't decided yet if the lights will be 4 or 6 sided and if they will be rectangular sides or trapezoidal. I do know each side will actually be identical and cast individually then tig welded to each other. This will ease the countless hours of artwork necessary for something of this scale. (I hope) The door of each of the lanterns will be the same as the sides with a handle cast into the surface and will be easily added during the wax phase. The tops will be cast in one piece and I still have to work out chimneys too. The last PITA to sort out will be the mounting setup. They will need to be really strong to support the weight of these lights. I have a sneaky feeling they will have to be hollow or the brackets alone could weigh 20-30lbs a piece! YIKES! I MAY consider actually forging some bronze square stock into some kind of scrolls to wall mount these things to. When finished, these will have to go up on the market to recover the crazy cost. I expect the final weight of these things to be 50-60lbs each! By comparison, my little jewelry box was almost 5lbs! And I was careful to watch the wax thickness last time and will have to work even harder now due to the size of these things. Rough dimensions of the boxes I estimate to be about 17" tall so I'm glad my junk kiln is a big one. I feel running a thread of this build will help poke me along to hopefully see this to completion. Why I torture myself like this is still a mystery? Thanks in advance to you guys that I know will chime in with wisdom and guidance. Your comments are appreciated and welcome!

As the dirty smith says.... LETS DO THIS!
Here is the Plasticine I am using. It stays pretty hard under normal temps and works easily when hit with a tiny bit of heat.


Dorking around tonight at 3am, if ya don't start like this, you'll never get to the end I suppose!
I don't know what to call it, so let's start with the tree lantern. Looks like I'll need a bigger piece of glass to work on.

 

Some small progress working the frame today. Been working a lot lately, in the door, out the door and repeat. This frame is about 15" tall and I think about 7" wide. I'm still scratching myself trying to keep in mind I will have to weld the long corners of these frames. So this might mean 45degree sides maybe? hmmm... Clay is SOOO much easier to work than wax so far.

 

Roses and leaves..... HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS!!!!!! I've squared up the frame (after all this is mechanical as well as artsy fartsy) and am trying my hand again at adding leaves and doo dadds...
You can see here in the photo, the top leaf is one I did on my own. It sucks! Then I remembered the old man that lives next door to me has a bunch of rose bushes! Out into the night I go to steal some leaves. The bottom leaf is a direct copy of a leaf. BINGO, much better! Having the actual leaf helps me position it before I stick it down. I'm still having trouble getting details the way I want. It's tougher right now for me than in wax. Still contemplating doing a silicone mold of just the frame and heading straight to wax. It will mean a second silicone however. :-/ I'm finding a little inspiration from "the Captain" never hurts either. ;-) I'm open to any suggestions anyone has to shape leaves. I did buy those little sculpy balls on a stick today. These have silicone tips on the other end. They are helping a lot. Thanks to whoever said get them. (John or Zap I think)

 

Sculpting is coming along, but work keeps getting in the way. :-/
I did grab the first of a few loads of bronze today.

70lbs, currently about $6.10 / lb with tax.

 

Second verse, same as the first! I'm sitting on 145lbs now. Hopefully this will be enough. :-/ Just need some time at home so I can finish up this clay work.
I got some really strange looks wheeling this stuff on a luggage cart to the plane.

 

2 Lanterns and too many pieces. 8 sides, 2 roofs, 2 bottoms and 2 supporting brackets. My wife thinks I'm half nuts, but she's on board. I thought about pouring 3 of the 4 sides in one go, but I'm a one man show and I'm trying not to need a gantry and all the crap that goes with a big lift. It will just be some time at the bench welding it together.

Making a little headway... I have found some details are easier done in wax instead of clay. i robbed my neighbors rose bush (again) and selected leaves that were the same size as my clay versions. I used a silicone bread loaf pan and poured in just the right amount of wax to make a sheet 1/8" thick wax. Then, tracing the leaves out, I added the stems, veins and texture. I am starting to dig the clay leaves out and inserting the wax versions. I've got 2 inserted in the photo. The ones at the top will need quite a bit of shaping. The rose bud at the bottom was a NIGHTMARE! I got lucky on the 2nd try and balled up some hot wax and twisted it into what you see here. The rosebud going in the top left corner is still haunting me. The first one I made was looking the wrong way. I'm on the ground this week, but the yard needs attention. Hope I can keep moving on this. I'd like to get it in silicone soon as I know the amount of wax cleanup work on this project is going to be RIDICULOUS! I'm trying not to think about I need EIGHT of these in bronze!

 

Finally got the 2nd rose looking the right way. Once again, a super hot ball of wax slammed together on a whim. BINGO! I tried a rose with nice petals, but I knew it would be a PITA to try to cast them. Here is the latest tonight. They only way I can seem to get to this is crawl up to the bench at midnight. Yes it's 4am now. Slow but steady.
I had an idea tonight... These will be 4 sided lanterns and no one will see the back side, so I'm contemplating after I pull a silicone of this piece, scrapping all the decorations off it and pulling another mold of it. That would be the back side of the lights. No one will see the detail on the back. The question is, is it really worth the extra silicone mold and the cleanup of the back pieces (wax and bronze work) ? hmmm

 

Time for silicone. We will see what kind of detail rebound25 can pull from plasticine. Worse case, I can fix in wax and remold it if necessary. Someone in my family thought I should ditch the two flowers for just leaves, but I kinda like the whole alive/dead rose bush thing I've got going on. Here is the final photos before silicone. If you see something obvious I need to fix, please speak up and stop me now! Thanks!
Jason

 

I'm sitting now in 5 layers of silicone and I made a frame for the mother mold. By doing this, I'm hoping it will sit level this way once it's inverted. Now I see why people have a mold library. After all this work, I cant see throwing this away. lol

1st layer of Rebound 25. Fingers crossed it pulled some pretty good detail. No thi-vex added here. 2-5 gets a small amount to aid in buildup.



Mother mold. Flexing of this silicon is NOT an option! This should help with any twisting of the frames. I rolled plaster bandages about 4 layers over the silicone then placed the frame over it and attached it with another 4 layers. Tomorrow it gets demolded. Fingers crossed. Oh, fwiw, vaseline prevents plaster bandages from sticking to hardboard. Mold release also works, but not as well. ;-)

 

Looks like it worked!!!!


While the pot was melted, I ran a test wax on the lantern side. I brushed the entire thing and didnt do the pour and drain method. My helping hands was a bit busy in the kitchen tonight. But for a first wax, we have a winner! Not a keeper, but the detail using rebound 25 is AMAZING!!! If ya haven't tried this stuff, give it a chance. I only used 30bucks worth of silicone here. My clay model even survived unharmed using mold ease 200. Anyway, here is a few shots of what I pulled tonight. Next go around, I'll brush first layer and pour and drain. Cool stuff this molding thing is.

 

Slow but steady.

 

It is WAYYY too hot to be screwing with wax out in the garage. Time to consider adding AC out there. I did stand 4 sides next to each other to see what this might look like. Poured a 5th frame and ran inside. The waxes are safe inside the AC. Time for some couch time with a sketch pad and come up with something for a roof and a mount.

 

So I need some large wax sheets... Youtube shows plenty of idiots dumping wax in cold water or the real idiots dumping water in hot wax. Barry at outback explained years ago about hot wax on hot water. Well, this makes sense because during my last dewax, I removed a sheet of wax from the water. Agreed it was nasty and a horrible shape. This time I'm trying it a little more controlled. Water was 170 degrees and the wax was around 200. I poured it slowly and then cooled it with water after it was good and stiff.


Better. I reduced the weight of the first pizza by 25% and tried again. This is a little thicker than 1/4". You can bet I wrote the numbers down to make this happen again. I never could have poured a piece this large and have it the exact thickness the full length with a plaster setup. Thanks to Barry for the stellar idea. You the man!

 

Started laying out the roof lines for this thing. Here is what I am thinking at the moment. I will mimic this in fairly thin wax and over lay on top of it a pattern. I sprung for an over priced wood roof mold from hirstarts. (40some bucks I think...) Not super impressed with their mold making abilities. Besides not being square, the thickness of the mold is uneven so you have to jack one side of it up when placed on a level surface. Maybe this doesnt matter when pouring dental stone or the dorks pouring these in mom's basement cant see well enough in the dark. :-/ Piss poor quality if you ask me.
I guess if you want something done right, you do it yourself. Thinking back, I called this guy a year ago and asked if he did the original work in cad. I asked to upsize this 100-200% and I would be willing to pay him for his time. He asked what I wanted them for and got all weird with me on the phone. I was honest and told him his work could end up in bronze. Mumbled something about copyright. SO I suppose it's okay for some dork to use his patterns to build a little house and sell it, but not what I was working. Whatever.

Does anyone have any bright ideas for doing this maybe on a larger scale? (ZAP!!!) I'm thinking these microscopic wood shingles are too small. I dont want 5 thousand of them on this roof.


The Idea....

 

The Solution. 5 big wax pizzas and assembly.

 

Easy roof tiles. I probably need about 80 of these! Plaster molds are not made for these high numbers. Lesson learned, should have made the mold from silicone.
The last 50 required some serious chasing to restore the details of the shingles. YIKES!

 

Roofing work. Getting them to lay correctly has been tricky. I've had to lift many and adjust the angle. The rustic look is what I am seeking.


As of August 2017, this is where I am. Work continues on the corners of the roof. Still need some sort of way to vent the hot exhaust out of the lantern while keeping out unwanted wind and rain. Even though this is a repeating pattern, I really tried to make it not look that way. I cut the 7" sections up and reattached them randomly and alternated side to side as well. I think it worked. I'm glad I'm not keeping track of the hours I've logged at the bench working this roof. WAYYY TOO MANY!

 

Man that looks like money in the bank! Any close ups of the details?

How long till you finish it up?

Have you decided what the top piece that covers the exhaust will look like?

 

Hi Zap.. Nice to see ya bro. I don't see me pouring until later this year. I'm still kicking around exhaust ideas. Part of me says, chimney and then I think about cutting faux windows up on the roof. Both could be cool. I'll get some more photos up soon. I'm stuck chasing wax dogs and some other stuff at the moment and I need to get back on these lights. Next to pour will be 2 little mirror frames, 2 dog key holders, a light switch cover and a rose. That all should happen pretty quick in the next week or two I hope.
For now, I'm happy this thread has a home and that will get me rolling again now that I can post PICTURES. You know the drill, when you are a one man show, it helps having that external push sometime to spur you on!

 

Yep definitely. I'm taking a breather from my wax/metal casting stuff and fixing up my aquariums. Been a bit metal casted out lately.

How about a small pyramid-like roof with shingles on it?