91 Degrees and tempermental fish making for temper-mental quittin’ time.

Fish #3. Fit well and hadn’t suffered a wax room collapse at the foundry.

The difference between the six finished wax trout I dropped off, and what I was handed back is like working forensics from a recognizable corpse; true Frankenfish that I have to reanimate to their original quality. The problem isn’t piecing in random remains to cover the parts lost in casting, but they too may be traced back to The Crime Scene: the foundry wax room. They did 10 trout for me on the last big commission and they were all fine, this time we are 1 of 3 so far, or in actuality, 1 of 6.

This is the dorsal fin from the Fish #1. See how it connects cleanly to the body with details all the way down. They biffed it a little toward the front, as some of the circles are partial, but did a fair job of touch-up. I went in and put in new circles in the bronze where I touched up their line.

This is fish #3 where the wax room tried to re-affix the dorsal fin after it softened and rolled to the side, collapsing into the body. They pulled it upright and slathered in some wax. They had five other fish to look at to check their work, so going for a standard of sux. 

This is their attempt on the other side of the fin. Almost worse.

The horizontal fin is wrong as well. They stuck it back on- see how it had deformed the body of the fish as it torqued upward? That’s bcs the room was too hot to store finished waxes.

It curves. So there’s a minimum bar met. There was an abrupt line smashing inward along one of the bisection seams from the wax room laying it on the table to attach sprews. This went unnoticed and took the medium sledge to massage back to alignment with the other section.

Still a long way to go ’til they all are up to snuff. Ima gonna lose mu myund if the remaining half (of parts that cast and new parts made in wax to fit where parts failed in bronze pour) are the same, or likely worse. I may still just reject the skinny middle fish from yesterday. They are also doing an entire replacement fish; lets hope this job is done by one of their competent staff and not the sprew crew.

Storms Labrador_ Weld & Chase

After chasing out the body and adding four big stainless steel nuts to the underside (for installation), it was finally time for the head. I positioned it and was ready to tack it in place, when I realized I hadn’t chased it yet. It had a few areas that had trapped air in ceramic shell, and these were now solid bronze- under the lip, under the ear- and a few flash lines. Plus the nose and ears needed to be polished out. With all that done the head was repositioned, tacked on all sides, then welded in place.

Chasing is the next step, or making the weld disappear. This is done in stages with multiple tools, ending with some bits of finess here, and some consternation there.

The next step is sandblast / patina. Tomorrow?