Only brittle if it is cold and you smash it against something or drop it. It's made to inject or slush cast into molds and made to burn out of molds with minimal expansion so it doesn't crack investment. I don't know how people do subtractive sculptures. It kind of blows my mind. If I couldn't use both methods I don't think I could make anything look right. I melt out the pouring cone and main sprue by hand then throw the sculpture into my custom burn out kiln. I don't boil water like Jason does. He's too hardcore Haha yeah. Burning wax isn't the best smell. I do it outside tho so it's rarely an issue. Why not buy everdur bronze? Its silicon metal and copper mostly. Pours very well and is about 4.50 per pound premade. They can ship to you for cheap too. And you can request smaller ingots. I think the burrs catch on the metal somehow and snap or maybe I'm pushing too hard. I've never broken one before with my dremel but maybe thats because it slowed down when I pushed too hard. Maybe a bigger burr won't snap? Unsure. I don't mind sanding too much but patination is not my thing. It just feels too fiddly and annoying and I dislike mixing chemicals each time.
I here a lot about the silicon bronze on this site and will buy some to see how it works. Color is fairly important but only to me. I only started using bronze so I could make some progress with the elimination of some casting issues. I started out using 100% copper. One day I read that if copper was easy to cast it would have been called the copper age not the bronze age. So I started making tin or lead bronze for its castability. Wasn't good at mixing the metal so well but I loved it when a casted horse came out with colors mixing from copper to bronze like a painted pony. I never even though of using any type of patina. I guess i'm still in the highly polished stage. I think as I start working on other pieces my mind may open up some. Hell this all started off trying to make two gifts from cast copper and silver so the vision is still a little narrow. Those pieces are finally coming to their final stages. The subtractive thing was something I started with clay almost 50 years ago in high school carving away at greenware before firing. Maybe I could actually make something if I started adding as well as subtracting. But like yourself it's hard to have a confident vision of what I am creating when implementing new techniques. What project are you using burrs on since the psycho chicken/eagle is still in wax?
some fantastic detail in the head and feet, so life like. you could save days of work by just hinting at the feathers for a more realistic look How big is it
