The thing that jumped out at me first: almost 300 pounds of bronze going into just two investment molds, shown nearly uncut. The maker left the whole ten minutes intact apart from trimming three minutes of downtime while the metal came down to pouring temperature. Watching a pour at real speed, with all the small pauses and corrections left in, is rare, and it makes the scale of the work feel real in a way edited clips never do.
The sequence itself is worth studying. The furnace lid is opened with long leverage bars, the crucible is lifted out on an overhead chain hoist with a lifting clamp, then set into a two-man pouring shank ring and secured. One person skims dross and slag off the melt with a long rod before anything moves toward the molds. The crews talk each other through every lift and lower, which given the weight involved seems less like ceremony and more like the only sane way to run it. Both operators are in aluminized heat-reflective suits with face shields and heavy gloves.
These cast sections are the first two of six large hollow pieces with quarter-inch walls, all part of an abstract sculpture headed for a local hospital. Once all six are done the finished work should come in around 800 pounds. The wax side interested me too: brown stock is partly new and partly reclaimed, formed in plaster molds, with red wax added after cleanup. When everything burns out the red blends in and turns brown anyway.
The one open thread: the maker admits not being experienced enough to say whether new and reclaimed wax behave differently. That is a genuinely interesting question, and I hope a future pour answers it.
Project by UV Metalworking & Fabrication. Watch it on their YouTube channel: