This week of the ear prosthesis project, I began sculpting the ear from the opposite side using colored wax. I was fortunate enough to get a pot that had already been colored to resemble skin tone. Had that not been the case, I would have to melt some uncolored wax and add crayon shavings until the color is just right. It seems pointless since the wax would be melted in a later process, but in fact the coloring reduces the transparency of the base wax and makes it easier to visualize the final product by making it more “human.”
These pictures aren’t the best since I took them with my cell phone. The one above shows part of my set up for sculpting the wax ear: a pot of melted wax, the base, and the ear cast from last week. The base, also known as the “defect” or “treatment side,” acts as a platform on which I place my wax model. You can see that I have marked up the size and important landmarks of my ear on its surface for reference.
Here is the initial blob of wax, lumped onto the treatment side while it’s still warm and pliable. I quickly molded it into the shape of the mirror image ear with my fingers.
After about three hours of shaping, here’s what the wax model looks like. It’s beginning to take the form of an ear, but to make it perfect will take some more work.
