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Lewis and Clark Sculpture pics

I wanted to share this with you all. I went down to Soulard (in St. Louis) to visit my friends Vlad and his son Misha Vitomirsky while they did the final assembly on the Lewis and Clark (and dog) bronze sculpture slated for installation at our river front. The sculpture is by Harry Weber. He is known for the large sculptures of baseball players at our stadium. Vlad and his son do the work by preparing wax castings of the the original clay art and then send the waxes off to be lost wax, bronze cast in Lawrence KS. They then assemble the final bronze castings by TIG brazing using silicon bronze rod. Keep in mind the sections do not fit the same way as the were molded because of warpage, shrinkage, etc. They have to be muscled (aka bent,shoved, kicked) into position before welding. The final piece is over 16 feet tall., weighing over 6k lbs.The lighting was terrible, hopefully you can see some of the details. The local TV news is braodcasting a segment about it tonight.

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Reply to
mlcorson
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On 21 Aug 2006 14:20:41 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "mlcorson" quickly quoth:

I hope it's worth it. One has to have a Yahoo ID and then join the STL Metal group to see it.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Sorry, I didn't realize you needed membership to see the pics. I'll re-post tomorrow.

-Mike

Larry Jaques wrote:

Reply to
mlcorson

On 21 Aug 2006 19:42:38 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "mlcorson" quickly quoth:

Addendum: One needs to get through the moderator to even join, so I'm still out. Thanks for reposting.

-- The Smart Person learns from his mistakes. The Wise Person learns from the mistakes of others. And then there are all the rest of us...

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Reply to
mlcorson

That is one BIG dawg!

Reply to
Glenn Ashmore

very cool pics, very nice (beautiful, impressive) sculpture, thanks for the link. made me think making sculpture is a honorable and time honored profession. reminds me of this stainless baseball player cast at a art foundry not far from me here in s.e. new york state.

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they also recently cast a cool triceratops dinosaur..

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b.w.

(i thought, in 100 years, the dog's tongue is going to be highly polished by people touching it.) (i saw a bronze sculpture of a standing human figure, can't remember who was portrayed, in the vatican in rome, his big toe was nearly worn away by people touching it for the past 500someodd years, thought that was pretty neat.)

Reply to
William Wixon

On 22 Aug 2006 06:47:39 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "mlcorson" quickly quoth:

Pretty cool. That's pretty large scale sculpture, isn't it? It's interesting to see how they have to make so many smaller parts in order to handle the curves of the figures.

-- The Smart Person learns from his mistakes. The Wise Person learns from the mistakes of others. And then there are all the rest of us...

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

The process is interesting. First a small scale clay sculpture is made. Then a laser beam scans the object, enlarges and CNC generates a large foam copy. It is a crude (but a full size) copy, and the foam is used as a base for the modeling clay. The clay is hand worked over the foam to produce the detailed sculpture. Then rubber molds are made, of each section. This section size is limited by the size the foundry can reasonbly cast. The rubber molds are then used to create a wax replica of the section. The rubber is stripped away after the wax cools and he wax sections are then shipped to a foundry. The foundry coats the wax with a plaster like substance, completely covering it. Then the wax is burned out and they have an exact rplica of the section within the plaster mold. Then the bronze is poured in, allowed to cool and removed from the plaster. Then the assembly of the sections begins. After TIG brazing the sections together, they will grind the joins to blend in with the rest of the sculpture. After grinding the entire sculpture will be sandblasted to an even finish. You'll not see the seams. Final bronze patina...off to the riverfront.

-Mike

Reply to
mlcorson

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