Hi!

My school recently got its furnace running again, and I'm doing my
(effectively first, for all intents and purposes) bronze piece.
Also my first time working with ceramic shell.
I spent, gosh, 80+ hours on a pretty intricate seated human figure.
It's taken me a lot of work to satisfactorily divide up the wax into
pieces to weld back together, clean it up, and sprue it.

I've been having trouble with sprues coming loose while dipping in the
shell,
and now worse, one of my pieces rolled over and shattered! After
having 5 layers of shell already on it... ****.

So here's my question.
I really don't want to take a wax pen to the wax, not with the shell
on it, and not for fear of serious deformation of the original piece.
I'm wondering if I can superglue just the wax, hope that more ceramic
shell can leak into the seams of the layers of shell that cracked wit
the wax and as long as I coat it with enough further ceramic shell, it
should stay strong? That would be the most uninvasive repair I can
think of.
If that isn't going to work; I'm thinking toothpicks to pin the wax
together,
I'm also thinking to embed wire or mesh into the shell to reinforce
the break?

Any advice is welcome; I want to save scores and scores of hours of
work!


thanks!
-Bernard

--NEXT time (heh) would it be possible to imbed wires in the wax?
That way you'd have a decent handle for dipping in the shell mix and for
hanging the thing to dry or whatever. After you melt the wax you could pull
the wires B4 pouring metal, yes?

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : Come see my stuff
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : at Maker Faire!!
www.nmpproducts.com
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---