Day 19 of Thailand Road Trip

05-12-09 Day 19 continued Thailand Road Trip - Phitsanulok

After visiting the museum we walked across the street to to the Buddha Image Casting

Foundry. This is a special place that makes the Buddha images using the old fashion sand casting method.

There are 12 steps to making a sand cast bronze image:

Step 1 - They make a wax image by casting in a mold or by hand making the wax image.

Step 2 - They clean up the image to make sure every detail is correct.

Step 3 - Some nails are put into the wax image to use for support of the mold.

Step 4 - Some plaster, sand and water are mixed and cover the wax image.

Step 5 - Steel wire is wrapped around the plaster and sand mold so it will hold together was it is heated.
Step 6 - The image is covered with more plaster, sand and water mixture.

Step 7 - After it is dried the mold is put in an oven, called a kiln, and the wax is melted out of the mold.

Step 8 - Pour hot molten bronze into the mold where the wax was and cool.

Step 9 - Break the mold and you have the bronze Buddha image.

Step 10 - Clean and polish the bronze image.

Step 11 - Make sure the image is very smooth and lacquer the base.

Step 12 - Cover with gold leaves - make sure it is perfect.

These folks make the Buddha Images as small as the size of a golf ball to images over 10 feet high.

We did buy a Buddha Image that was made in this Foundry for our friend Catrina in California.

After spending this wonderful day at the museum and the Buddha Casting Foundry, Daeng said she would like to go see the second most famous Buddha which is here in a temple.

The most famous Buddha is the "Jade" Buddha.

It was only about 2 km away and was listed on our GPS locator's memory as a site to visit.

This temple was over 600 years old. You can see by part of the brick ruins the contrast of the old and the new.

The old saying of "Buddha has many faces." means that there are many different Buddha Images.

I took a picture of a line of Buddhas that were all slightly different.

One of the things I have noticed is the Thai Buddha has male features. The Myanmar (Burma) Buddha images have female features.

The main Buddha Image is over 12 feet tall.

It was a busy but interesting day.