When they brought the horse into the store three legs and the tail were being held in place by some black cloth tape.  The horse had been to several places including the Artist retreat called the Yaddo here in Saratoga Springs for almost a year hoping to be repaired.  They were tired of waiting so they brought it to me to see if I could do something with it.  The horse is an outdoor statue that had belonged to her grandparents.  It was frozen to the porch and she and a friend wanted to move it.  So instead of pouring water over the hoofs and melting the ice they decided to give it a kick.  Wasn't a good idea.

After John saw the horse he said I should just call them and tell them it's beyond repair.  The price I quoted them was $150.00 which meant I lost money on the job but as I'm doing it on my own time it doesn't bother me too much.

My guess is this Asian Bronze statue is from around the 1930's.  Asian bronze is around 70% copper compared to Western bronze which is around 90% copper.  This make the bronze brighter in colour and the casting not as well done.  In most places the material is paper thin and up to 3/32" in other places with the sand casting sand still inside.  I used bare Silicon Bronze for a filler rod with a brushable flux.  After working on it I found that 1/16" thick rod was the best choice because of the thickness of the casting.  Unlike the bronze metal I used as a backing, the cast bronze is granular, does not flex and likes to crumble.

If the legs or tail are prone to breaking from people or weather I would fill the limbs with a Gypsum based cement with a rod placed inside for support.  So basically you are cementing the two halfs together with some form of rebar inside for more support.  Then you would braze the two halves together and be done with it.

As you see in some of the pictures I picked up a pick-up truck bed crane with a purple sling to hold the horse up and to hang from for the hard to braze areas.  Remember when you are brazing that gravity sucks, so you will have to place the statue in all kinds of positions so the braze doesn't drip off.  I noticed when I was brazing that this horse is full of small holes and cracks.  The more you look the more you find.

The picture on the left is the right rear broken leg.  The one on the right I placed bronze metal strips as a backing for brazing because the material is so thin.

I was brazing the leg on the left and I had a dime size spot on the inside left to do when the leg broke off an inch above where I was working.  There was another crack running around the leg hidden by the paint.  The right side picture shows the same leg with a crack further up on the backside that needed repairing.

 The tail has a metal tube on the inside so you just slide the tail on.  I filled the area up with braze and noticed there was a spot at the base of his tail with no metal.  Just packed sand cast sand with paint over it.