Bronze Casting Lab
Ethan Keyser
ME 350X History of Technology
18 September, 2014
Casting metal in molds is an ancient method to create tools. Bronze was one of the more commonly casted metals, and process for doing so was demonstrated in the lab session. The bronze was first heated for several hours in a furnace. A mold of an Egyptian dagger had been created using a mixture of cement and epoxy. The bronze was then poured into the two-sided mold, once it has cooled it was removed from the mold. The newly casted dagger would need to be sanded down and smoothed out before it was complete. Although modern tools and technology were used, the process was still vary similar to that used by the Egyptians.
Another interesting point discussed in the lab, was the materials that different societies used to create their molds. One of the more common methods was to etch the mold into two pieces of rock, and seal the edges with clay (this is similar to the method used to cast the bronze dagger). Other societies used clay to make one time use molds in the ground. Additionally, using a mixture of fine dust and water, a metal worker could create a mold by imprinting the object he wished to duplicate into the mixture and then letting it dry.