Wax casting

Inl y Casting Waxes. The three types of inlay casting waxes, ie, types A, B, and C, are used to produce wax patterns for the lost wax casting process in the production of cast gold inlays, crowns, and bridges. Some inlay wax is also used to produce patterns for acryflc restorations. 

Metal Casting Techniques. Many ancient cast metal objects were made by the cire perdue (lost wax) casting process, which involves pouring molten metal into a one-piece mold and letting it solidify modem fakes are usually cast in two halves that are then joined. A casting fin, or a fine line of filed solder on a cast object, usually reveals that the casting is modem. 

Feinberg, W. (1983), Lost Wax Casting, Interim Technology, London. 

Hunt, L. B. (1980), The long history of lost wax casting, Gold Bull. 13, 63-81. 

We investigated eight Matisse bronze samples that were either small pieces of metal or shavings saved from the drilling of mounting bolts. All sculptures were made using lost wax casting except for The Serf which was sand cast (Table III). 

Metals, usually gold and silver, are often cast to make rings and other small jewelry pieces. In lost wax casting, a wax pattern for a jewelry piece is burned out of a mold. A large variety of waxes, such as beeswax, paraffin, and tallow, can be used. The waxes can release formaldehyde and acrolein. 

Sperm whales also carry a quantity of oil in a cavity in their heads. This oil contains a wax compound called spermaceti wax. This wax is white in color, and was used for candles, wax casting, and in medicines. 

The radiographic evidence strongly supports a lost-wax casting procedure and does not indicate a sand piece-mold process as demonstrated by the following observations. The iron armature is not an iron wire, as used in modem processes, but is an irregular band, approximately 12 mm wide and 2 mm thick (Figure 17). Similar armatures and also iron chaplets have been observed in many bronzes manufactured in... 

In lost wax casting, the most widely used precision casting method, a model is made of the desired product. 

FIGURE 12.35 Lost wax casting as it may have been practiced. 

The use of diphenylamine in concentrated sulphuric acid to identify cellulose nitrate was originally used in forensic investigations in the 1930s to detect the presence of explosives on suspects hands (Gowan and Purdon, 1967). As a forensic test, wax casts were taken of the suspect s hands and the diphenylamine reagent applied to the wax. Sulphuric acid reacts with cellulose nitrate to form nitronium ions (N02 ) which then oxidize diphenylamine to form the dark blue dye, diphenylbenzidine violet. 

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