Making A Copper & Platinum Plated Life-Size Red Fox Statue

0. Silversmiths generally work with smaller pieces. Besides, if it's mostly made of copper, you'll be wanting a coppersmith, not a silversmith. In any event, you're probably better off going to a sculptor or other artist to cast yourself the rough statue, then taking it to a metal polisher and finisher to finish off the job.

1. Copper has a density about 9 times the density of a human or animal; that means a solid copper life-size statue of a 10 kilogram adult fox should weigh about 90 kilograms. Add in extra mass because a fox has large hollow ears a big fluffy low-density tail, add extra mass for the wings and even more mass for whatever base you're going to be sitting this thing on and it can easily weigh up to 200 kilograms, or twice the weight of a hefty adult human. Not exactly the "portable commodity" that thieves are usually looking for.

2. No, multiple platings in different metals should be no trouble at all for a skilled metal plater. However, I'd recommend making the entire object itself out of a metal in your primary colour (in this case, copper) to avoid at least one of your plating jobs. A copper statue should also be relatively easy to cast. You could use a cheaper metal (like aluminium, which would also be lighter) but I'd be worried about the permanence of the plating.

3. This thing is, as discussed above, heavy. The feet are (presumably) at the bottom. It's also going to have something a normal fox doesn't have to contend with: two big heavy wings attached to its back. You don't really want to be doing anything that will structurally compromise the legs that are holding it up, and replacing the copper feet with black rocks sounds like structural compromise to me. I'd seriously recommend replacing your black rock idea with artificially oxidizing the copper body in the parts you want blackened. If done well, it should give the same effect.

4. I have no idea how much a project like this might cost. The $1200 worth of raw copper you're going to need to buy will be just the start of your expenditure. There's however much you're going to have to pay the sculptor, the copper-caster and the metal finisher. This could easily be a $5000 to $10,000 job.

I agree, as I'm sure I didnt help. Nice Sap!

I suppose it all depends on what you really want: a "giant piece of bullion that looks pretty" or a "piece of art".

Taking a solid block of silver and giving the entire thing a "thick plating" of other metals would, in my opinion, be rather pointless, since there'd be no indication from the outside that it would be a silver object. People usually take base-metals and give them a thin precious-metal plating, not the other way around. Once it was finished, no-one would believe you (or your heirs and successors) that it really was solid silver under there. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume you still want to go ahead with that plan.

The density of silver is only slightly higher than copper, so the total weight of the object is going to end up about the same: about 200 kilograms (quick rule-of-thumb conversion: multiply by 2 to get avoirdupois pounds - it's actually multiply by 2.20462 if you want to be more precise. Or, to convert to troy ounces, multiply the number in kg by 32.1507). Of course, the price for solid silver increases quite considerably. By my math, you'd need about $160,000 worth of silver at today's prices. You can probably halve that cost if you're prepared to make the base out of something cheaper.

Making it hollow would significantly reduce both the weight and the cost and, just as the Statue of Liberty is held up by the steel girders hidden inside it and not the copper sheeting you can see from the outside, a hollow statue would mean that you wouldn't have to rely on the precious metal for your structural integrity. You could build a stainless steel framework to attach the silver to. Structural integrity also imposes limits on the stance the animal will be taking. Lying down? Sitting? Standing? Walking? Leaping into the air with wings spread? That's pretty much in order of difficulty, since the further along that list you go, the more you'll have a rather large mass of solid metal precariously balanced on four, three or two spindly legs. Neither copper nor silver are particularly strong metals; you certainly don't want to make something that will buckle and sag under its own weight over time.

You still never told me what this silver statue would weigh in POUNDS, you know, "lb"s? I don't know math very well, so I can not convert what you say in kilograms to pounds.

Good news is that is less than 1/4 of a ton...


Now let me explain that to you.... a U.S. ton ... is 2000 pounds... 1/4 of 2000 is 500. I think...

440 lbs. is LESS than 500... by ... wait I think I can get this.... 500-440.... well I'm not having any luck ... not enough fingers and toes... sorry about that... but I still think 440 is LESS than 500... maybe just not sure


Edit: math is hard.... 2.2 times 100... NOW I'm LOST!?!?!?