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The manufacture of true ormolu employs a process known as mercury-gilding or fire-gilding, in which a solution of mercuric nitrate is applied to a piece of copper, brass, or bronze; followed by the application of an amalgam of gold and mercury. The item is then exposed to extreme heat until the mercury vaporizes and the gold remains, adhering ...
Lost-wax casting – also called investment casting, precision casting, or cire perdue (French: [siʁ pɛʁdy]; borrowed from French) [1] – is the process by which a duplicate sculpture (often a metal, such as silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method.
As the name suggests, the lost-wax method is to use wax as a mold, and heat it to melt the wax mold and lose it, thereby casting bronze ware, making the model (the outer layer of the wax model is coated with mud), lost-wax (heating to make the wax flow out), pouring copper liquid to fill the cavity left by the wax model, etc.
There is evidence that gold and meteoric iron (but not iron smelting) were the only metals used by humans before copper. [3] The history of copper metallurgy is thought to have followed the following sequence: 1) cold working of native copper, 2) annealing, 3) smelting, and 4) the lost wax method.
West Mexican smiths worked primarily in copper during the initial period, with some low-arsenic alloys, as well as occasional employment of silver and gold. Lost-wax cast bells were introduced from lower Central America and Colombia during this phase, along with several classes of cold-worked ornaments and hand tools, such as needles and tweezers.
Candle moulding machine in Indonesia circa 1920. Candle making was developed independently in a number of countries around the world. [1]Candles were primarily made from tallow and beeswax in Europe from the Roman period until the modern era, when spermaceti (from sperm whales) was used in the 18th and 19th centuries, [2] and purified animal fats and paraffin wax since the 19th century. [1]
Modern practice in museums and archaeology is increasingly to avoid terms such as bronze or brass for historical objects in favour of the all-embracing "copper alloy". [4] The head is made using the lost wax technique and is approximately three-quarters life-size, measuring 35 cm high. The artist designed the head in a very naturalistic style.
The Chalcolithic-period Nahal Mishmar hoard in the Judean Desert west of the Dead Sea contains a number of arsenical bronze (4–12% arsenic) and perhaps arsenical copper artifacts made using the lost-wax process, the earliest known use of this complex technique. "Carbon-14 dating of the reed mat in which the objects were wrapped suggests that ...