Hello All!
Today I would like to take some time to write about a very exciting event that happened a few weeks ago--the Iron Pour. The jewelry and metalsmithing studio has a centrifugal casting machine to cast small scale bronze, silver and gold but casting iron is a horse of a different color!
Last semester sculpture hosted a visiting artist Casey Westbrook and a team of his students from The University of West Georgia who traveled to SU to help us build a furnace for melting iron and carry out our first iron casting. It was the most incredible experience that I have had at SU and so I was eager to participate again. Casey came back for a second time and a few of the West Georgia Crew returned as well. The pour was scheduled for Friday October 2 and the week proceeding was spent making sand molds of the objects were were casting, cracking iron, preparing the charge bags, retouching the furnace, and other various jobs. Due to quantities of rain, most of the pour was held inside the sculpture department; usually iron casting is held outdoors because of the high temperatures. On that night almost 2000 pounds of iron were melted to around 2800 degrees F. (The average casting that happens in the metalsmithing studio is about 1763 degrees F for silver and about 1 oz.)
The second pour around was no less exciting than the first and I am excited to participate again.
Pictures from Nick Arnold!!
Until next time,
Gitta
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