Lit Sung Goong Temple monument

Discussion in 'Sand Casting' started by Mark's castings, Oct 12, 2017.

  1. I was looking around for some photos of sacred temple swords made in bronze and found these photos of a temple monument for a local Chinese Temple that was knocked down in the 1960's. There was a cleanup of a local street "Sachs" street with brothels, opium dens etc., and the temple was on this street. The story goes that it was sold for unpaid council rates and then knocked down, despite the fact that religious buildings were exempt from such rates at the time. Sachs street was renamed Grafton street after the "Cleanup". The Lit Sung Goong Temple translates roughly as "All Saints" although I could be wrong on that. There were several carved wooden artefacts including a lucky coin, lotus blossom, lucky bat and the temple seal which were replicated in bronze and were hand made patterns rather than a precise CNC routed super accurate pattern. My only involvement was helping with the bronze pour, welding the 316 stainless steel box they were mounted on and the photoresist etching of the legend on four sides of the box. The. complete box was shot blasted and then nitric acid passivated to remove any surface iron that would weather and stain the box brown

    The Queensland State government funded the Cairns Local government project and it was interesting to be peripherally involved with the project. When the monument was delivered, we were accused of using "Gold painted wood" by one person not used to seeing freshly passivated bright bronze and later on had to field a few phone calls confirming the item "Was real and not Photoshopped" to the state funding body. I guess they have an occasional project suck up all the funds without actually producing anything. It was really good to be involved with such a project and the local Chinese community were very happy with the monument and had a ceremony with the priest blessing the monument at the workshop before it was delivered.

    Newspaper article about the unveiling of the brand spanking new "Salvaged temple artefact"
    newspaper article.jpg

    The "Sacred Bat" sand mould
    Sacred Bat sand mould.jpg

    Bronze Sacred Bat
    Sacred bat.jpg

    The Lit Sung Goong temple seal
    Lit Sung Goong Temple Seal.jpg

    Temple Bronze Castings.jpg

    Lotus blossom and sacred bat cooling down
    Cast bronze objects.jpg

    The longevity symbol or as I call it, the "Live Long and Prosper" symbol
    Temple Casting-Live Long and Prosper.jpg

    Trying different finishes on the Lotus blossom bronze
    Bronze Lotus.jpg

    Photomasked stainless with some grey silicon repairs to pinholes halfway through etching.
    Film etching.jpg

    Closeup of the etched 316 stainless steel
    Hcl+Cuprous etch.jpg
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2017
  2. Here's the photos of the monument after it was placed on the street outside the original temple location a year or so after creation:
    17122013(004).jpg
    17122013(002).jpg
    17122013(006).jpg
    17122013(005).jpg
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2017
  3. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Thats bad ass man!
     
  4. DavidF

    DavidF Administrator Staff Member Banner Member

    China? or Australia? Im confused on the history... Nice monument though :)
     
  5. PatJ

    PatJ Silver

    I like it a lot.
    Nice work, and some cool looking castings.
     
  6. It's at Cairns, Australia. Australia had an extensive history of Chinese immigration dating back to the days of the gold rush in the area. I have some photos somewhere of some bronze swords and temple artifacts for a male adulthood ceremony or something but I can't find them at the moment. I could be wrong but I think it was for a Hmong temple. The bronze ingots were from Tibet or somewhere similar and had been continuously blessed every day for two years, no women were allowed to touch them or it would discharge the energy somehow and again no women were allowed into the building while the swords were cast. When Lee the temple guy came to collect them he put them on the front passenger seat of his beat up old Datsun and made his wife sit on the back seat for the trip home. He lit three candles during the operation and the castings were a success, these days if a difficult casting comes in we refer to it as a "Three candle job".
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2017
  7. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Amazing! Looks like a really fun project to have been a part of.

    Jeff
     
  8. The technical side of it was fantastic, most of the people were awesome and some of the involved people less so.....one nameless person was alleged to yelled at my foundry friend "You'll never work in this town again!!!" shortly before they left town without a trace whereas he's been in foundry business for 40+ years.

    The bronze "sacred swords" project was really cool too, imagine making bona fide religious artifacts: two temple swords. They may exist within the religion as objects for thousands of years and are made out of a material that will happily resist corrosion for a few thousand years buried in the dirt where an archaeologist could dig them out and wonder about their use. The design was straight out of a martial arts movie and whoever made the models would have been unaware of their weight in bronze: I could barely lift one maybe 20 kilos or 44 pounds. I expect they would have to remove half the weight to make them liftable.
     
  9. Jason

    Jason Gold

    3 candles? SO that's the ancient chinese secret! Dollar store candles work for me?

    What was the thickness of these? Looks to be about an inch????
     
    Mark's castings likes this.
  10. The lotus blossom is the thickest at about 1.5", the temple seal and longevity coin would be 0.625", and the bat is about 1" thick. As a joke while making a stove door casting for the first time we lit the three candles we had lying around and of course the casting was perfect....so it definitely works :D
     
  11. Jason

    Jason Gold

    WOW. That's pretty fat. That's some serious shrinkage control. *ahem* :eek:
     
  12. The lotus blossom had shrink cracks at the narrow section in the middle that you can see in the photo's, these were peened over and are not visible anymore. Apparently that sort of repair is very common in "art" bronze castings simply because the geometry in statues can cause flow problems. With the resin sand moulds we use precast sprue blocks that can be put anywhere really once a hole is drilled in the sand lid and in the case of the lotus it should have been right over the middle not off to the side. The resin sprue/pouring basins/spout are sat on the surface and don't leak molten metal surprisingly, although if it's a big one we stick it down with window silicone a few hours before pouring. A lot of sand is saved by doing it this way
     

Share This Page