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SCULPTURE FOUNDRY SERVICES AND ARTISTS
Welcome to Max-Cast

Sculpture Foundry Services and Artists

Founded in 1983 by Steve Maxon and joined five years later by Doris Park, Max­-Cast is a full-service sculpture foundry operating in Kalona, Iowa.

We produce original sculpture in bronze, iron and aluminum as well as offering a full range of foundry services for artists, contractors and the general public. Our people are highly skilled in all aspects of the metal casting process. Many are artist in their own right, creating their own sculpture at the foundry or working in other mediums. Click on the images below for more information about our founders.

Commission Work

We are award-winning sculptors who have been commissioned for a variety of work, ranging in scale from small plaques to monumental statues.

Custom Casting Work

We create sculptures, prototypes and replica parts, hardware and architectural ornaments, and other restoration work.

Restoration

We restore historic statues, cast items for architectural renovations, offer moldmaking, casting, welding, sandblasting, finishing, and re-patina.

About Us

Meet Stephen Maxon
and the artisans at Max-Cast

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Hardware for architectural aluminum transom water treatment plant in Toledo Ohio, 2019

Our Work

See our work including
commissions, restorations, sculptures and more

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Commission Herbert Hoover maquette fleshed out clay, aluminum, commission, 2016
Installing the bronze doughboy in Appleton, WI 2017

Foundry Tour

Come for a Foundry Tour
and learn what we do

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Making a rubber mold of an Edgar Allen Poe bust
Ceramic shell molds are pulled from the heat-up kiln at 1200 to 1500 degrees just prior to being poured.

Sculptor’s Guide

Explore our resources
and Sculptor’s Guide

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Bronze Bust of George Washington, Washington, Iowa
Bronze bird bath and feeder
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The world photography awards

Photography Awards

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Awards Winners

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Quote Post Format

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Peter Smith
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Amazing places to visit

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Mei no modus persequeris, pri laoreet maluisset intellegebat ex. Consul scaevola no ius, ponderum repudiandae sed, labore aliquid verterem an sea. Modo erroribus ne eam, ne vel dicta ridens.

Ei vis regione sanctus, impedit sententiae eum ut, vim debet tibique definitionem in. Usu ea vidit integre vituperatoribus, cum ea facete suscipiantur. Et cibo fabulas docendi vis. Id cum nominati concludaturque, ex eos malis tantas deserunt. um et nulla possit bonorum, ad posse assum scripserit pro. Admodum honestatis in eam, vim vidit debitis cu. Mei no modus persequeris, pri laoreet maluisset intellegebat ex. Consul scaevola no ius, ponderum repudiandae no sed, labore aliquid verterem an sea. Modo erroribus ne eam, ne vel dicta ridens. Mei tritani reprimique scriptorem at, modus conclusionemque sit te, in quo regione omnesque suscipit. Ne velit labore vivendum quo. Ad oratio fabellas cum. Nam aperiri sensibus ad, mei amet clita malorum ad. Ea sit tation perfecto euripidis, legere insolens vix eu.

movedo-post-gal-01Cum et nulla possit bonorum, ad posse assum scripserit pro. Admodum honestatis in eam, vim vidit debitis cu. Mei no modus persequeris, pri laoreet maluisset intellegebat ex. Consul scaevola no ius, ponderum repudiandae no sed, labore aliquid verterem an sea. Modo erroribus ne eam, ne vel dicta ridens. Quo ex alterum deseruisse. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, insolens adipisci dissentiunt mea ea, quo id everti suavitate accommodare. Sit te omnium tritani, quo id ridens commune pertinacia. An duo viderer reprimique reprehendunt, eam ea alii everti. Ludus molestie consulatu has id, inani error sit cu. Eu tollit incorrupte eum, ex mollis discere molestiae vim, pro doctus facilis argumentum eu. Pri no admodum referrentur, libris denique antiopam id eos. Consul scaevola no ius, ponderum repudiandae no sed, labore aliquid verterem an sea. Modo erroribus ne eam, ne vel dicta ridens. Quo ex alterum deseruisse. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, insolens adipisci dissentiunt mea ea, quo id everti suavitate accommodare. Sit te omnium tritani, quo id ridens commune pertinacia.

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New trends in web design

Web Design

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CSS Design

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A viral song after 20 Years 1920 1272 MAX-CAST

A viral song after 20 Years

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Iowa Off the Beaten Path

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Max-Cast Kalona Iowa front of building
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Larger than life: Sculptors build a business in Kalona

The Gazette logo

 

By Steve Gravelle, correspondent

Steve Maxon flipped on the light in a cluttered room.

“Lincoln’s here,” Maxon said, pointing. “That’s from 2009. Irving Weber’s here — he’s a little beat up. Hayden Fry, he’s from last year.”

Those figures, as big as or maybe a bit larger than life, now stand on the Illinois College campus in Jacksonville (that would be young Lincoln, open book in hand), at Iowa Avenue and Linn Street in Iowa City (Weber, the city’s official historian, doffing his hat), and at First Avenue and Ninth Street in Coralville (Coach Fry in his 1980s sideline attire of aviator shades, baseball cap and sweater with dress shirt).

But all three and many more landmarks in towns across the Midwest got their start in a warren of connected buildings at the east end of downtown Kalona. The figures there now are the wax masters used to make the molds into which bronze is poured to cast the statues.

Maxon and his wife, Doris Park, both sculptors themselves, started Max-Cast in 1983 on a rented farm between Iowa City and Kalona. Maxon was a few years out of the University of Iowa’s graduate program in sculpture where he studied under Julius Schmidt. Schmidt was memorialized as the “grandfather of cast iron sculpture” when he died last June at 94.

“I was kind of interested in being an illustrator and I just walked into one of his classes,” Maxon recalled. “It’s kind of fascinating, all the things you can do.”

Maxon’s discovery coincided with a decline in industrial foundries across the Midwest.

“A lot of foundries were closing around then, so I got a lot of equipment,” he said. “The foundry was just set up in a chicken coop in the backyard of the farm.”

Max-Cast moved to Kalona in 1988, when the buildings on B Avenue came up for sale. Maxon recently purchased the buildings next door.

“I guess we’re going to start fixing them up a bit, and rearranging things,” he said. “Maybe we’ll make one of those buildings into a little museum and keep all of our sculpture efforts over there, the clay molds. They’re kind of charming, and we don’t want to cut them up and throw them away because we’ve put a lot of work into them.”

In addition to full-sized statues, a product line launched in 2004, Max-Cast has developed a niche replicating vintage hardware.

“For a couple years we were doing a lot of restoration work for the (state) Capitol in Des Moines,” Maxon said. “Hinges, door handles, all sorts of little doodads.

“We would make a rubber mold on it, then do lost wax for the shell. High-fidelity stuff. Sometimes we make stuff from a drawing.”

A St. Louis company specializing in antique lighting — “streetlights, chandeliers, that sort of thing” — is a regular customer.

“We do a lot of repair work on damaged sculptures, too,” Maxon said. “Fix them up, re-patina them.”

And then there was the dead cat.

“They wanted it memorialized, so they brought in their dead cat,” Maxon said. “We made a sand mold of the dead cat. It looked pretty good.”

Maxon and Park still do their own sculpture when they have time. On a quiet Monday afternoon, Maxon worked in the front office while two of the business’ six employees — that number includes Park — worked on a couple projects.

“It’s always pretty slow,” Maxon chuckled. “But we’re having a pretty good year. A lot of work, and things have gone really well. It’s sort of feast or famine.”

The craft has changed — Max-Cast often works from computer-assisted design software these days — but the deliberate pace remains. It takes at least six months to produce a life-size statue.

“We have to model it, decide what people want, do drawings,” Maxon said. “Then we do a little miniature of the cast to work out the 3-D problems in miniature before we do the big one.

“We go through a series of approval points, then we start making the full-sized clay model and make a rubber mold of that and do waxes from that.”
CAD software can cut speed the process a bit.

“Make it out of foam and cover that foam with clay” to make a mold, Maxon said. “It’s a lot easier to make this stuff than it was in the Renaissance. They had to pin parts together, they didn’t have MIG welders.”

Still, Maxon said most visitors are surprised at “how long it takes to do things.”

“It’s really labor-intensive and takes a long time to run stuff through here,” Maxon said. “It’s not a push-button thing at all. It’s pretty time-consuming.

“You really have to go over things and be careful with every little step.”

Visitors can buy small art objects displayed in the front room, and Maxon often is willing to conduct tours of the work areas where all those life-size figures live. He’s glad young people still seek out the trade.

“I’ve got good people right now who are younger,” he said. “One of them’s doing a really crackerjack job. I’d like to get more people interested — I’d like to get someone here who’d take it over.”

At a glance

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John Bloom statues placed in DeWitt

Quad-City Times | Steven Martens

DeWITT, Iowa — After more than five years of planning, two statues depicting a scene from the work of DeWitt native John Bloom were installed Monday along the streets of his hometown.

The life-sized bronze statues, depicting a scene from Bloom’s mural “Shucking Corn,” features a farmer shucking an ear of corn in his field, accompanied by his dog.

Read more >

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Auction to help Park Inn restoration effort

A reproduction of the Richard Bock-designed “Spirit of Mercury” statue will be auctioned to raise money for the Park Inn restoration effort.

Steve Maxon of Max-Cast in Kalona reproduced the statues in bronze.

“The statue being reproduced for the auction stands approximately 28 inches tall and has an armspread 27½ inches wide. It will be made out of a base of gypsum cement with fiberglass and acrylic reinforcing and then covered with a bronze powder, giving it the appearance of bronze.”

https://globegazette.com/news/local/article_a092433c-b7c8-11df-a977-001cc4c002e0.html

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History Detectives: Copperhead Cane

 

PBS History Detectives
Season 8, Episode 2:  starting 6:47 features Stephen Maxon, Max-Cast

Our contributor inherited a cane topped with a snake, According to family lore, the copperhead cane belonged to our viewer’s great-great grandfather, Henry Clay Dean who opposed the Civil War. He was a member of a powerful anti-Lincoln group who were nicknamed the “Copperheads” after the snake known for striking without warning. History Detectives tracks the story behind the Copperhead Cane.