March 18 Foundry

From our nice hotel in downtown Thanjavur, we journey northeast to Swamimalaion near the Kollidam River to visit the Rajan Bronze Arts school and foundry ( www.rajanbronzearts.com ). The workers were busy finishing castings made with 4500 year old techniques. The techniques are so authentic that one man was chiseling the gate (the main 'artery' for the flow of bronze into the mold) bit by bit, which could have been cut with a hand saw in a fraction of the time. Two of the students showed us the wax modeling - how the pieces are formed and fused together to form the figures. The figure the has runners, vents, sprues, and gates (wax rods) added and are then encased in a very fine clay with two more layers of successively coarser clay. The mold is heated to near the temperature of the bronze, and the metal poured (which we did not see). The cast figures are finished by chiseling, filing and burnishing. The largest single cast ever done with these techniques, a Shiva to be placed in Switzerland, had a trial run that was started, then abandoned. A whole new wax figure was made, deemed easier than repairing the first casting.
Naturally, we bought a piece, not as big!