Customer Reviews

Bronze Casting: A Manual of Techniques (Manual of Techniques S.)

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I bought Guy Thomas' "Bronze Casting: A manual of techniques" with the idea that I would learn from it how to cast bronze. I was sorely mistaken. This is a book not about casting bronze, but preparing to cast bronze. It covers all the preparatory steps quite adequately, and I won't deny that I learned a lot about modeling, making molds in various materials, and suchlike. But when it came to the part I really wanted to learn about, i.e. how to cast bronze, it says: "Take it to a foundry." It does give a bare sketch of what they do at the foundry, but certainly not enough that I could learn what I wanted to know. I'm not sure what an appropriate title would be, but bronze casting involves firing up a furnace, pre-heating ingots, dropping them into a crucible, then removing the molten metal and pouring it into a mold. It's about fuels, furnaces, temperatures, crucibles, gas welding and sand-blasters. I was sorely disappointed, many dollars poorer, no more knowledgable, and still kicking myself for buying a book by its title.

Despite the title, this book is not a manual of techniques for casting bronze. It does provide a some good information about sculpting a model and preparing it for casting, though. If that's what you are interested in, then this book is worth reading. However, it provides very little information on the casting process itself. As the earlier reviewer said, it doesn't go much beyond "take it to a foundry".