Manufacturing artistic bronze handles in the investment method of casting is an inherently labor intensive process. Every decorative aspect of the door set has to be created in wax. A single door set requires a minimum of 4 wax patterns 2 for the left and right levers and 2 for the backplates. Some levers and knobs require 2 wax patterns to be poured as separate waxes and later fused together to create one complete wax pattern.
The Hedgerow lever is extremely detailed requiring 2 molds one for the tree canopy and one for each of the left and right facing tree branches. The canopy and tree branches are melded together using a small heated pen blade, the edge of each wax is gently melted and the two are pressed together to form a tight bond.
A metal spindle is used to connect the 2 levers of a door set and to accommodate this we have to create a small cavity in the end of the wax lever. We either add the shape of the ferrule to the pattern so that this detail becomes part of the wax facsimile or we add a separate ferrule that is machined in steel. In either case to preserve the ferrule shape and to prevent the cavity from subsequently filling-up with silica slurry a tightly fitting ceramic core is place inside the ferrule before the wax pieces are shelled.
The final casting is shown below and is part of a complete collection of tree-inspired designs
