Extreme Kit Bashing

I like so many things about the Chrysnbon kits, apart from the fact they are not wood or metal. They are very believable when photographed. I have never seen better scaled bathroom fixtures. I see many of those bathroom kits in the dollhouse blogs I read.

I brought this stove home with the intention of making some design changes and casting it in bronze. I wanted to get rid of the faux nickle bling for one thing. I didn't want it to become the focal point of a room. I also wanted to make the stove fuctional. To do that I had to buy several stove kits and cut them apart with a jewelers saw before they could be cast.

I had a few brass ornamental findings that I pulled molds off of. Into those molds molten casting wax was poured. Those wax embelishments were added to different pieces of the kit. It is a labourious process because they all had to be fused to the plastic by carefully melting the wax on to the plastic. It was done with a hot needle around the edge of each wax ornamental piece. They had to be sucure or they might break free during the vaccum investment process.

I won't bore you with the details of the lost wax casting process, except to say most polystyrene's will burn out of investment clean.

Finally, all of the bronze kit pieces were silver soldered together (with a torch), The finished stove was oxidized and and given a coat of Renaiassance Wax.