How long does bronze casting take, and why?

Three months

That is the published figure and it is the one to plan against. It starts after the master pattern is approved and the deposit is paid, not at first contact.

The design conversation before that point has no fixed length. It depends entirely on how many revisions the client wants, and that is the right place to be slow, because it is the last point at which the sculpture can change. See the approval gate on the process page.

Where the time actually goes

Most people assume the furnace is the slow part. It is the fastest part.

The pour is over in under a minute. Everything else is preparation and recovery around that minute.

The sequence is: master pattern, silicone mould, wax pattern, wax assembly, ceramic shell, burnout, pour, shell removal, cutting and welding and chasing, patina. Two of those consume most of the calendar.

Reason one: two moulds, and one of them is destroyed every time

This is the single fact that explains most timing questions.

The silicone mould makes the wax. It is taken once from the approved master pattern and it is reused for every casting. This is the mould the client pays for and owns.

The ceramic shell is built around the wax, and it does not survive. It is built up coat by coat around one specific wax, with drying time between every coat, then fired so the wax burns out, then filled with metal, then broken off and thrown away.

The shell exists for exactly one casting. There is no version of this process where a foundry reuses it.

So when a client asks, entirely reasonably, "you already made one of these, why is the second not quick", the answer is that only one of the two moulds carries over. The silicone mould saves the master pattern stage. Everything from the wax onward happens again from the beginning.

Reason two: chasing and welding is the bottleneck

A casting that has just come out of the shell is not a sculpture. It is a rough metal object with feed and vent channels still attached, a slightly grainy surface, and in many cases visible seams where the piece was cast in sections.

Getting from there to a finished bronze means cutting the channels off, welding divided sections back together, and working the whole surface by hand until every join and every trace of the casting texture is gone.

This takes longer than any other stage, and it is where the difference between foundries is actually visible. It is also why we price by the difficulty of moulding, casting and chasing rather than by weight: an intricate surface can take days that a plain one does not, at identical weight. See services.

Why some pieces are cut apart on purpose

Not every form can have a ceramic shell built around it in one piece, and not every form lets molten metal reach every part of itself in a single flow.

Those pieces are divided at points chosen in advance, cast as separate sections, then welded back together and chased until the joins disappear. Deciding where to divide a piece is a skilled judgement, and doing it well is invisible. Doing it badly is the first thing anyone notices.

This is planned work rather than a repair, and it is a normal part of casting anything complex.

Why a single piece takes longer

Wax burnout and the crucible both work better with volume. Firing a kiln and running a furnace for one small object is possible but wasteful, so a single casting waits for a run it can join.

We accept single pieces. We just say plainly that they wait, because the alternative is charging a client for a furnace run they did not need.

The three months, broken down

Add the rows after master pattern approval and you get roughly two to three and a half months. The published figure is three months, which is the number to plan against.

One row is most of the calendar. Chasing runs one to two months on its own, and it includes assembly and welding, so on a piece cast in sections it covers putting the sculpture back together as well as working the surface. Everything else on the list is measured in weeks.

Do not read the low end as a promise. The bottom of every range assumes a straightforward piece and room in the shop. A quotation that leads with the best case is telling you about its sales process rather than its workshop, and we would rather give you a date that holds.

What you see during the three months

Photographs and video by email as the work moves through the stages. The workshop is closed to walk-in visits, so documentation is how a client stays close to a piece they cannot stand next to. Visits are welcome by appointment, and are most useful when booked against a specific stage.

Next

• Process, stage by stage
• Who owns the mould?
• Get a feasibility estimate