The ceramic shell/lost wax process of casting metal is a very old, tried and true, but complex procedure. Those of us who have employed it are constantly on the lookout for new methods and materials that can reduce costs. The holy grail would be a rubberlike product that can withstand the searing heat of molten metal, thus allowing elimination of the “ceramic shell” portion of ceramic shell/lost wax process.

In the 1960s there were great advances made in producing rubber-like materials that could withstand great heat. At Desert Crucible, we experimented with a number of these new materials. None achieved holy grail status.

But never belittle the efforts to get there.

There was a pair of artists who came in with a sculpture of a standing figure, about eight inches in height. We recognized the figure immediately. It was a likeness of our family friend and Desert Crucible benefactor, Tucson artist Ted DeGrazia.  At this point in time, Ted was an internationally known artist, whose images were being widely reproduced in a plethora of forms — refrigerator magnets, cups, caps, drinking glasses, T-shirts, etc. The sculpture was well rendered, and we were of course curious as to what they intended to do with it.

Along with the sculpture, they also presented a rubber-like mold of the sculpture, which they had made themselves. They said it was of a “proprietary” material, the composition of which they were unwilling to divulge. They also brought with them a bag of silver coins. They wanted us to melt the coins and pour the molten silver directly into the mold.

We advised against this. We told them that we had experimented with some of the new rubber-like products, and that they had not withstood the heat of the molten metal. They insisted that the properties of this proprietary product were entirely different. It could handle the heat.

A buck is a buck, and the customer is always right. We proceeded.

The mold accepted the molten silver.

And then it didn’t. It began first to smoke, and then to bubble… and froth… and spit. When the mess cooled, they stripped away their proprietary product from the now solid silver metal. Features of the face were still recognizable, but the body was a mass of unrecognizable metal bubbles and pits.

Still searching for the holy grail.

I suppose despite any preparation work you do prior to starting a new business, the learning curve doesn’t really start until after you have hung out your shingle. So it was with Desert Crucible.

Early on, we took in any work we could get, and we bent over backwards to accommodate potential customers, no matter how unusual the job. We needed the money.

One of our early efforts that fit this category immediately comes to mind. It involved, of all things, a cannon barrel.

The customer brought in a muzzle-loading, black powder-fired, ceremonial cannon with a barrel about three feet in length. He wanted us to make a rubber mold of the barrel, so that we could make wax duplicates that he could use in the lost wax process to cast brass replicas of the barrel. No problem. Mold made. First wax duplicate provided.

As are so many entrepreneurs, he was long on ideas and short on cash. He wanted us to cast the first replica in brass, but he balked at our price quote for doing so. He asked if we could lower our price if he provided the brass for us to use in the casting. We negotiated a price that deducted our cost of metal, and we proceeded to prepare the wax for burnout and casting.

On casting day, he arrived with his wash tub filled with scrap brass. Keep in mind that we were to put the scrap into a crucible, melt it to a liquid a temperature of about 2150 degrees centigrade, and pour it into the ceramic shell containing the impression of the wax barrel.

We took one look into his wash tub of scrap brass and immediately began our “No way, José” dance. The scrap brass was small arms ammunition casings that had been collected from a firing range, and the collection contained misfires and even some live rounds that still had the projectiles in place!

I have no idea what his thought process was, but I am still impressed with the image of the fireworks that would have occurred with live rounds going off in a crucible of molten metal.

He reluctantly agreed to our original price using our own source of brass.

Have you ever noticed that you can read bit of text and think that it has no grammatical or spelling errors, only to have someone point out to you that it does? Then you read it again and it still looks fine? But it still does have errors — that have to be pointed out to you?

This is not an unusual phenomenon.

A NYU study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveals that the human brain can detect the basic linguistic structure of a sentence in just 150 milliseconds – nearly the blink of an eye. The brain’s left temporal cortex distinguishes complete sentences from random words in as few as 130 milliseconds. Slight errors in spelling or structure slightly delays this response time, but around 400 milliseconds later it “corrects” the mistakes, interpreting them as valid.

So we finally have a valid excuse. It’s our brain’s fault. It “corrected” the error before we recognized that it was an error.

Now that science has proved that it was not my fault, I can confess to one such “brain-burp” in which I was a major participant.

In addition to sculpture casting at the Desert Crucible, we were at times contracted as well to cast an accompanying bronze plaque that would be mounted near the sculpture and would convey basic information about the sculpture.

In the case in point, we were to cast just a plaque itself, containing in addition to the plaque verbiage a bas-relief of the face and shoulders of the man to whom the plaque was dedicated. We were not naïve about avoiding the dangers of spelling errors and grammatical errors. We had a review system established that included two people reviewing the printed script, the customer signing and dating a copy of the script indicating his/her approval, and two people reviewing the zinc plate used to make the mold.

This was a fairly large plaque for us, as I recall about 26 x30 inches, and it had a lot of verbiage. The lettering was as small as we could use and still expect a good casting result. We took our time and did it right.

The resulting bronze plaque was a work of art and we were all quite pleased with it. The bas-relief translated well, and the verbiage communicated the myriad of public services the man had rendered in his lifetime. It was a fitting memorial.

As we were wrapping it for delivery, I did a double-take at one phrase: “…. Dedicated to his many years of pubic service.”

CRAP!