Because of, what I believed to be, the relatively simple design of the dags along the top I made the decision to begin with them as my first element. The plan was to carve and cast one single master in bronze which would be used as a stamp for the brass sheet which would ring the top of the horn. This being my first serious attempt at carving wax, I approached it the same as I would carve wood. I tried to use the knives and tools as gouges and chisels. Very quickly I learned that my approach was completely wrong, that this needs to be a scratching and shaving operation. This realization solved much of the chipping I was experiencing.

For lack of a better term, the faces were next. They were much more dimensional than the dags which were just bas relief. This time I would have to worry about all sides of the shape, and have a long "tail" which would be folded over the rim of the horn. Having learned that I should be scraping and shaving rather than cutting and carving, these went much better, but were mainly done with a reference image and carved by the seat of my pants, with little planning or transfer of design. This lack of planning was easily seen in the asymmetry of the eyes and mustache, along with the overly elongated eyes. Lessons were learned about layout and would permeate to the next step.

Lessons learned from the first two items, I moved onto what I felt was the center piece of the horn. I wanted to make sure that the raven head would shine without the flaws I saw in the prior two items.
My first step was understanding the shape and printing out a reference image to what I felt would be scale. then transferring the major lines to wax using a stylus I had made to stipple lines into the wax. I then used a jewelers saw with a wax blade to cut out the basic shape of the head. To clean up the outline I employed needle rasps. This left me with a vaguely raven shaped blank with layout lines.

I would be amiss were I to go further into our tale without introducing the major cast. The knives are all cheap woodcarving tools I found at a craft store. Out of the box they are exceedingly dull, time was spent with high grit sandpaper to sharpen them and polish the edges to near scalpel levels. With wax, the sharper and more refined the edge, the less drifting and chattering will happen. I use as well clay tools filed and sharpened to the same degree. A mechanical pencil with a metal needle point works as a scribe, and compass with metal points on both sides. The most important tool, I found, was the needle rasps for gross shaping, and bulk material removal. They can be used to define the overall shapes and flow of the piece, then knives are used just to clean up what was created with the rasps.

Having refined the major shapes and flow with the rasps, I started to cut in details. making decisions about how I wanted parts to flow into each other. This entire process was spent referencing my exemplar and trying to bring all parts of the head to the same level of finish at the same time, so I would not have one area I was completely finished with, and others untouched.

The area of the sculpt i struggled over the longest was the beak. There are remarkably complex and compound curves happening throughout this area, and trying to develop a flow to the lines was a constant back and forth between rasps and knives. Bringing in "Wax Brite" at this point, which is simply citrus scented butane that melts the surface of the wax and polishes out micro scratches. This allowed me to have a more clean surface to reference.

At this point I was finished, and just cleaning up edges, smoothing bumps, and removing chips.

Having learned lessons from the first two elements on this piece, I was happy with how this came out. Had I not had a time line, at this point I would have happily gone back to the first two and start over making better use of the knowledge I had acquired.

These are all the elements which will be cast for the horn. The ring and the cone were not shown in the build progress. However, the cone shows a huge lesson learned. I carved this item out of a large block of wax, removing a core with drills and a heated ring mandrel then shaped further to fit with rasps and knives. Ultimately this worked, but were I to approach this again I would use the horn itself as a form. I would dip the horn into a pool of melted wax repeatedly to build up a cone of wax which would perfectly fit the curvature and form of the horn. Adding of elements and carving in details could happen once a thick enough layer of wax was built up.
That all said, removing the raven head, and designing it with a pin to fit together with the cone was absolutely the correct decision to make.

All these elements are destined for a lost wax casting, however, I do not want to destroy my masters that I had painstakingly spent months carving. To that end, silicon molds were made, then lower melting temperature casting wax was injected into these molds to create these pieces. These will become our sacrificial "Lost Wax" items.

Trees. A collection of wax items attached in such a way as to allow molten metal flow into the void they leave. This is what I needed to create with all the elements. There was difficulty in layout and size and balance. Where the sprue attaches will leave scars that will need to be sanded and polished out, they were carefully placed in areas easy to deal with the damage.

At this point, the trees are ready for investment and then casting. Ideally, the goal is to be left with a perfect replica of the wax with metal.

Investment is a high temperature plaster which will fill all negative space, and create the mold which the metal will be formed into.

The process of creating the investment mold is time sensitive, and finicky. Requiring precise timings for mixing, and a set period of time in a vacuum chamber to remove air pockets and fill voids. When done correctly a perfect mold is left. And the investment molds are left to fully cure and dry before casting day.

Casting day. The molds are put into a steam chamber to heat and melt the wax out of the investment. This is the "lost wax" of the process. Where the wax once lived, now exists a cavity perfect to fill with molten metal.

As the metal is heating, the molds are in a furnace to come up to temperature themselves. We are trying to avoid thermal shock at this point. Our brass will be around 930°C (1710°F), pouring that into a relatively much colder mold will cause cracking and explosions. I am told that sprays of molten metal are not a good thing and should be avoided.

When metal and mold are to temperature, metal is poured into the mold and allowed to cool to the point it is no longer producing it's own light.

Heat is a funny thing. At this point the molds are cold relative to the molten metal, but hot relative to human skin. The metal pieces are also encased in plaster. To remedy all these issues they are plunged into a bucket of water. The water will violently boil, the investment will experience thermal shock and crack, dissolve, and break away from the metal, and our metal pieces will be cooled to the point they can be handled.

We are left with metal where once there was wax. Investment is packed into every crevice, and the surface finish is less than ideal. At this point, clean up begins, files, sand paper, buffing wheels. Many hours of clean up and surface finishing.

Metal clean up and polishing is not difficult. the process is just time consuming. At this point I was getting close to a result I was happy with, however I wanted an end result which showed age and character. To achieve an aged, patina result we have two options, time or chemistry, but our tale will circle back to this thought.

I had a stamp made for the triangle dags. I knew their dimensions but now how they would lay out on the horn. To solve this I wrapped painters tape around the top lip of the horn, marked out about an inch for stamping along the rim, then was left with space to layout the triangles. This pattern was transferred to sheet brass for stamping.

I transferred the pattern to sheet brass and cut out the pattern, but left material in-between the triangles as room for error. I only cut the bottom points closer to leave me with a reference point to align the stamp.

To transfer the design, the stamp was placed under the sheet brass aligning as best as I could with reference marks I could make. Then a block of tin, (a relatively soft and mailable metal) was placed on top of the sheet brass and hammered. The tin would push the brass down, and form to the shape of the stamp below it, imparting the stamp to the brass.

Stamping complete, the excess material was removed, and the stamped rim was formed around the horn. The faces were bent and fitted into place, being used as clamps to hold the rim in place as it was formed and fitted to shape.

Returning to the thought of aging our elements, I decided that chemistry would be a much quicker and controllable option. Copper and copper alloys have fun reactions with a variety of common chemicals. In this case, I wanted a blue/green patina to help bring out the details in the carving I had done. To archive this result all the elements were cleaned and degreased, then sprayed with ammonia and sprinkled with salt, then left to soak in a container filled with ammonia fumes for 2-4 hours.

The patina came out exactly as I had hoped. The next step was to remove most of it and return every surface to a high polish. the patina will remain in the deep recesses and create an amazing contrast to the high polish of the rest of the brass.

I feel this was an invaluable extra step which adds a bit of depth to the brass.

Post polishing, the elements were attached to the horn with 2 part epoxy resin. A tube of brass was cut down the center and formed into a 'U' channel which was attached over the rim to give the horn a clean finished look, and create a surface which would be more comfortable to drink from. The faces were added on top of this rim to help hold it down. An overlap seam was carefully hidden under one of the faces to create a continuous appearance of the rim.

Because of the rim and the faces bent over the rim, there were many places within the horn which could trap liquid and give an environment for bacteria to grow. To solve this issue and make the horn safe to drink from, I mixed up food safe resin and pour it into the horn, slowly spinning the horn as I tilted it and poured the resin out. This was repeated 4 times to create a liquid tight and safe to drink from surface on the interior of the horn.