I too would love to participate in a wax carving workshop, and a mold-making one as well. And I would love to learn more about bronze casting.
tl;dr below:
I know someone who's a sculptor, and she talks about the expense of working with bronze - both in terms of the cost of materials, and the cost of operating a forge. She also talks about how incredible it is to work with FIRE and melt metal, which makes it sound really amazing.
There's a fair bit of time involved in preparing the mold for complicated object so that it can be cast properly. The lost wax casting method involves making the wax object, putting the mold material around it, drilling holes in the mold where the metal gets poured in, and then melting the wax out. If you plan to make a one-off piece, you break the mold after pouring the metal. Otherwise, you have to know how to cut it so that it can be removed from the cast object (e.g.if you have parts that fold in on themselves).
I was curious, so I went online to see where one might buy the raw metal for casting. Bronze is apparently about $15/lb (
http://www.mcmaster.com/#red-metal-ingots/=t29up6) from an industrial supplier, but I found it cheaper through eBay (12lb ingots for $90 + $20 shipping from the east coast). It contains copper, which at the moment has a pretty high market value (and is a reason why people steal copper wire, statues, and things). People buy leftover bronze from machine shops, but there are issues with mixing different kinds of bronze alloys together.
Anca.