So I’m sculpting an elk, and as it gets closer to finished I’m wondering what on earth I’m going to need to do to get this molded and transformed into wax. I’ve molded and cast animals before but I’ve never done one with antlers like this. Any recommendations on how to do something like this? Specifically the antlers? also. I don’t like welding the animal feet directly to the base (I don’t think it looks good) so I’m sculpting these feet on these pads, the plan will be to weld the pads to the base and blend it in after casting. Is that a good idea?
That's a nice bit of work! I can't help with the moulding, but I am keeping watch for the replies. Good luck.
Now you have my attention too! Somebody is going give you the heads up on the conversion process for this, trust me. Can you show us one or two or three snaps of your earlier work? I for one would really like to take a peek. John.
My experience with any sort of a lost wax process is rather minimal so take this for what it's worth, how about molding the antlers and the body separately and then join them back together before investing the wax?
That's a very nice piece of work, can you advise the size of it please ? Are you wanting to keep the original piece after moulding ? There are several ways I might go about moulding this but would normally have the piece in front of me to make a final decision.
the easiest way i think would be to remove the antlers and make separate moulds of them. then join everything back together at the wax stage. if you want to do one mould the it would need about 4 pieces, one for each side of the body, one for between tghe antlers and one for between the legs. Ill see if i can dig out some photos of what i mean. Regarding the feet, the usual way is to place on a stone base. to do this is to have some rods sticking out from a couple of the feet which can be threaded and bolted through two holes in the stone. another good way is to sculpt some landscape around the beast and attach to the stone base in the same way. If you do want to stay with the metal base then just make it from wax and attack your wax elk to it before investing
the cat was cast as one piece with base attached I made the mould for this bronze age horse in six pieces. Two piece for each side and two pieces between the legs The dog I was able to do in two pieces of silicone and a four piece plaster mother mould for support
Love those horse photos... I would cut those antlers off for sure. Remember, all you have to do is get them close. The real shaping is going to be done once you are in bronze with the grinder.
thats exactly what it is. It isnt my work. A guy in germany sculpted the horse and i made a mould and cast it in bronze for him. He made the rest, chariot and sun disc. but he thought the horse was a bit to complex for him to mould.
Nice to see some metalurgy from my parts of the woods. Fun fact: there is a photo of the wagon on our 1000 DKK note.