Quent Cordair Fine Art

Hello again and thank you for joining me for the last installment of this Artist’s Studio.
The surface has now been scrubbed back by hand to highlight the piece overall, but now an air tool polisher will be used to polish the skin and other smooth areas to give a luster under the next patina color.

The next step is another chemical, ferric nitrate (iron for the brown color), applied with an automotive paint sprayer and a blow torch for heat.

After the iron solution is applied, but before the bronze cools, it is waxed with a high quality carnauba wax - the hardest and most durable wax available, which comes from the carnauba tree.

It is further driven into the bronze with heat from a torch. This will protect it from the elements outdoors, and like maintaining a car’s finish, it should be reapplied on a shady or cool day about once a year. After cooling, the wax becomes matte and the piece is given a final polish with a soft cloth before shipping out to a gallery or a collector’s home.

Thanks again for joining me, and for supporting the Arts at Quent Cordair.

Hello again and thank you for joining me for this Artist’s Studio.

The metal “chasing”- welding, grinding, sanding, etc- has been completed and the piece has been once again sandblasted clean for the next and final step, the “patina”, or finish that both colors and protects the bronze. This actually takes several different steps, so I will be showing it as 2 installments.

This piece will receive a “French Brown” patina, probably the most universal, and one that holds up well outdoors. The first step is to “black” the bronze by spraying it with a solution of potassium and sulfur sometimes called “liver of sulfur” (gotta love that), which actually reacts with the copper in the bronze to turn it black. It’s interesting to watch it actually go from yellow to black as the reaction takes place.

The next step is to scrub the blacking back off the higher surfaces, creating a highlighted effect which brings out the shapes and texture of the surface.

Hello again and thank you for joining me for this Artist’s Studio.
The bronze pieces of the sculpture have now been sandblasted clean of any remaining ceramic, and are then “chased”-

ground, sanded and polished of any defects caused by the casting process. Next, the pieces are welded back together with a TIG welder (tungsten inert gas),

and the welds are again chased with grinding tools to recreate the original surface of the sculpture. In the last couple photos, the rainbow discoloration is where it has been welded, and the shiny parts are where it is being ground and sanded.

Hello again and thank you for joining me for this Artist’s Studio.
This installment is my favorite part to see in person- “metal pour”. Last time, the wax was melted out of the ceramic shells, creating a mold for the bronze to be poured into. Now, the shells are put on a sand covered cart which is wheeled into a large oven to pre-heat them before pouring in the molten bronze. They are heated to around the same 2000° F tempurature as the molten bronze to prevent cooling of the bronze as it flows through the shell.

Then they come out and the bronze is poured into the hot shells through the “cups” and “sprues” which are now hollow.

After the bronze cools, most of the ceramic is chipped off with hammers and air chisels.

The cups and sprues (now solid bronze) are cut off to be recycled, and the rest of the ceramic will be sandblasted off before assembly begins.

Hello again and thank you for joining me for this Artist’s Studio.
We are now ready to start the ceramic “shell”, which is actually a second “mold” created for each bronze in a limited edition. Because bronze is just under 2000* F when molten, we need a mold that can tolerate that temperature. Also, you don’t want a casting that is solid bronze, so we are using hollow wax castings which will produce a hollow bronze casting. The wax pieces have the “sprues” and “cups” attached as mentioned last time, and they now begin one of the longest parts of the process.

The pieces are covered in a liquid ceramic mix, which must air-dry between each coat.

There are different mixtures used as the thickness is built up over several weeks, until it is about an inch thick.

You can see the finished shells in the last photo, turned upside down (the cup is at the bottom) to melt the wax out in the “autoclave”, a heating camber which captures the melted wax so it may be recycled.

When the wax is melted out of the shell, we have a mold which has captured not only the outside features, but the hollow inside of the wax casting as well.