It will take several post to cover this topic. 

 Step 1- I will make a ceramic shell of the wax sculpture. Then I will burn the wax out of the shell and pour in the bronze.  But first I have to add a system  of wax channels to the piece in order to have a way to get the bronze into the ceramic shell.  I made a wax cup and attached a 1" wax sprue to the bottom of the cup. The sprue is used to attach the cup to the sculpture. The cup will be the opening the bronze is poured into. I  inserted a hanger into the cup to use to hold the piece while building the ceramic shell.   Now that I have a channel to get the bronze in the sculpture I need  channels to get the gases out. If you don't get the gases out you will have air pockets and the bronze will not fill the piece. Since the bronze will push the gases through the piece I will attach sprues at the bottom and attach them to the top of the cup. I attached small sprues to tiny areas like fingers to make sure gases do not block the bronze from filling the shell. 

This piece is ready to start dipping and building up the shell. The Glassell foundry is having growing pains and it will be a few weeks until I can start dipping this piece. You can sign up at the end of  the blog to get emails if you want to make sure you do not miss any steps of this blog post.