johnb

Trial One- To start off, I went to Linday’s Books to get basic info on how to cast bigger than jewelry sized metal objects. If you like to build stuff, Lindsay’s is great. Just need to find time to build that backyard sawmill so that we can increase the size of our office because we are busting at the seams!

My friend Alan, who let us use his shop a while back (remember the trophy bases?) got inspired to cast the Castle Crashers figurines because his son is a huge Behemoth fan. Alan was looking for something to experiment with bronze casting and the palm sized Castle knight was just right for the first experiments. When cast, the knight weighs in at about 10 ounces, so he has a nice heft to him.

First thing is of course a great calculator. I’m not really sure why, but it makes it feel super scientific since we are going to be working with molten metal heated to nearly 2000 degrees. In the background you can see one of the knights who has been drawn and quartered.

Usually to cast something of this size you’d use the lost wax method of casting. This means the sculptor would sculpt a model out of clay, make a mold out of plaster, then cast in wax. The wax copy of the sculpture then has sprues attached to it so the bronze can flow to all parts of the sculpture.

Once the sprues are attached and a funnel like indentation is made, the parts are embedded in plaster contained by an iron cylinder. Then it is in to the oven to bake out the wax.

In order to save time, Alan decided to pioneer the “lost knight” method of casting, where sprues are added to the knight figurine and it is cast directly into the plaster. He figured since it will be baking out for a while at 1900 degrees, it wouldn’t matter if it was PVC or wax…

Comic Con feels like it is just around the corner because of all the things we want to do this year and my to do list is a mile long. Back in 2003 we had a little 10×10 booth next to Activision’s mega Castle Wolfenstein booth. We prepped for half a day before the show and now five years later we are beginning 3 months in advance. This year we’ve moved up to a huge (for us anyway) 20×20 peninsula booth. One of the new things on display at Comic Con will be the bronze Castle Crashers trophies! Last year’s Alien Hominid HD trophies for the top leaderboard slots went over really well, so we are doing it again for Castle. But this year, instead of genuinely simulated gold we are going all out and doing genuine genuine bronze. If nothing else, at least learning how to cast bronze will be fun! It turns out that casting bronze is a lot harder than any of us imagined…

Thanks!

-John