Artists Finding Foundry : Die Is Cast for Escondido Artisan

Sculpting can be a fine, precision art where the artist transfers his feelings, vision or message onto a moldable medium, using such tools as tiny, delicate knives and his own fingers.

Some of these artists then turn their creations over to Bill Yancy, whose studio features bubbly caldrons of molten metal heated to 2,100 degrees and whose tools of the trade include hammers, hoists and heat-resistant suits similar to what someone would wear at a steel factory.

It is that marriage of two artists’ skills that result in fine artworks cast in bronze.

And while the completed objet d’art may carry only the artist’s signature, with it goes the pride and expertise of the unsung caster who shares in the piece’s beauty--and price tag.

“Some artists can’t stand to have others intervene in their work,” Yancy said. But sculptors who want their works copied in bronze have to accept the notion that theirs is a joint venture.

Some artists may sculpt in clay, wax or wood with the intention of having the sculpture reproduced many times in bronze, to be sold at popular prices in art galleries or gift shops. Others may sculpt in stone but want only a few copies cast in bronze, to be sold as limited editions of the original.

Few artists have the know-how or the equipment to make the necessary molds and to pour hot bronze into them. They have to turn to the likes of Yancy, who operates what may be the only bronze foundry in San Diego County dedicated exclusively to the casting of artworks. Other foundries may duplicate art in bronze, but they also accept industrial casting jobs.

Yancy, a retired engineer for the phone company, got into this line of work because he was a wood carver who wanted to bronze some of his own pieces. He studied bronze casting for two semesters at Palomar Community College, in neighboring San Marcos, and got hooked.

Two years ago he started his own company, Hammerman Bronze--a name inspired by his son, a carpenter. The foundry is in an industrial section of the city.

Yancy has one full-time employee and hires additional artists on a piecemeal basis to tend to the various tasks involved in turning a piece of art into bronze. The process combines both science and art.

The first step of the casting process is to disassemble the original sculpture--with a jeweler’s saw, if necessary--to create simpler forms for molding. A bust might be molded as two hemispheres, but a cowboy on horseback--with ropes, reins, the tail and an assortment of legs and arms--may take as many as nine separate molds. Occasionally, the bronze duplicates are made at the expense of the original, which, depending on how it was constructed, may never be reconstructed.

The next step is coating each piece with several blankets of urethane rubber, and then reinforcing the flexible rubber mold with plaster or fiberglass.

Hot wax is then poured in the mold. The result is a hollow wax duplicate of the original piece.

Yancy’s artists then painstakingly touch up the hardened wax pieces, using hot knives, soldering irons or dentists’ tools to eliminate any excess wax or to repair any holes or marred surfaces. This part of the process is so important that the original artist may do the work.

Next, small hollow feeder pipes (gates) and exhaust rods (vents) are attached to the wax pieces at points where the molten bronze will be poured and the steam and gases will escape. The gates and vents channel out through a funnel-like device called a sprue.

The piece is then dipped into a plaster slurry and coated with zircon, a sand so fine that it can register a fingerprint. Several coats of zircon are applied to each piece, followed by a coating of heavier sand to give it strength. It dries hard and brittle, and envelopes the wax duplicate of the sculpture.

The piece is then set inside an autoclave, a steam chamber where the wax is quickly melted and drained out of the shell through the gate-and-vent network. What remains is the quarter-inch-thick zircon shell; its interior wall carries every detail of the original artwork’s exterior.

The shell is put into a kiln and heated to more than 1,000 degrees so it will not crack when the molten bronze is poured into it and so the bronze will not cool too quickly.

Meanwhile, 30-pound bronze bricks are melted in a furnace that heats the metal to 2,100 degrees. It emerges in the caldron with a mercury-like consistency, a shimmering silver-orange liquid.

Yancy and his assistant, Jeff Lindeneau, both dressed in heat-resistant suits and gloves, raise the caldron out of the furnace with a remote-controlled hoist, then carefully pour the liquid metal into the sprues. Done properly, the bronze will fill every nook and cranny, with gases escaping through the vents.

After allowing the pieces to cool for about 30 minutes, the shells are broken with a hammer. “This is the moment of truth,” Yancy sighs as a still steaming-hot but hardened bronze sculpture appears from the falling-away shell. Yancy and Lindeneau inspect the pieces--in this case, a Roman soldier on horseback--to make sure there are no missing fingers or other details. They proclaim success.

The pieces are cooled, then welded together. After sandblasting, the pieces get a patina, a chemical treatment with spray, brush or dipping, to draw out various metallic shades of green, red, brown, black, rose and purple. The artist usually oversees the making of the patina, because it can make or break the casting process, Yancy said.

For every duplicate bronze, Yancy starts over again, using the same rubber mold, remaking the wax model and the sand shell.

The foundry process is so important to sculptors that a reputable foundry will actually attract artists to that community, he said.

Hammerman Bronze has more than 50 regular artist-customers--some from as far away as Los Angeles, Yancy said. He says he has done about 3,000 castings in two years. By comparison, some more established foundries in the state boast upwards of 300 customers and have a score or more full-time employees. Some foundries, on the other hand, deal almost exclusively with one artist, and their success rises and falls with that of the artist.

Yancy’s fee depends on the intricacy and size of the object; a life-size bust, for instance, might cost $800. He has cast free-form items as large as five feet tall, and as small as medallions for bracelets.

“Some foundries do only production items, like valves, boat propellers or gears. They do hundreds or thousands of them, and they’ve got all the bugs worked out in the design phase so the items cast well,” Yancy said.

“But we’re dealing with art, and when an artist is creating his sculpture, the last thing he is thinking about is gates and vents. That’s the challenge of our work--in dealing in an extreme variety of castings, each a unique shape, in which we have to figure out the gates and vents each time so there is proper pouring, proper venting and proper cooling of the object, so it pours solidly and completely and so there is no shrinkage of the metal.

“We don’t have the luxury of casting a product that was designed to be molded,” he said. “It can take more time to produce a bronze copy than it took the artist to produce the original.”