Week 1 (Week Begining 25/01/10)

Casting Architectural Forms

For this new semester I have decided to carry on with some of the work I started last semester and expand upon what I have already done and taking my inspiration from architectural forms (in particular new and modern architecture like the work of Zara Hadid)
In the first semester I started using the band saw in the plaster room to make shapes cause I was having trouble modeling in card and wasn't able to accurately draw the shapes in my sketch book. After spending some time practicing on the band saw I came up with a couple of shapes I was happy with.
Above is the shape I was most pleased with. After flattening off the sides by using water and hand lapping the plaster against a sheet of sandblasted glass I soaked the plaster ready to make a gel flex mould of it. When the mould had cooled completely I poured wax into the mould and to make a wax duplicate of my plaster model in order to do a lost wax cast. The wax I made was hollowed out so that it wouldn't take too long to get the wax out of the cast (this is where I left off with this piece last semester). On the Tuesday of the first week I made the investment mould for the piece using a mixture of plaster (1.2kg), silica (1.2kg), HT (800g) and water (just over 2lts). When the mould had hardened I cleaned it up and removed the wax (because the wax was hollow I didn't bother steaming it and scraped out a bit of the wax and the rest I was able to just pull out of the mould. The mould was left a few days in the drying cupboard for it to dry completely.

Using a displacement test I found that I would need about 500ml of glass to fill the mould, so I measured out a little more than 500ml of Glasma Glass (from the hot shop) just in case. I then put the glass into a flower pot because the glass wouldn't all fit into the mould. Before putting the glass onto the mould I sieved some copper oxide onto the mould to give the glass a blue colour (this is also carrying on from some of the work I did last semester). I then rested the flower pot on top of some kiln shelf wrapped in ceramic fiber paper so if there is too much glass and the kiln shelf and the glass touch there wont be a compatibility problem.

When I was happy with how everything was set up in the kiln I shut the kiln and set it for a full cast. This is the program I used:

100 ⁰C/hr → 550 ⁰C → Pass hrs
Full ⁰C/hr → 880 ⁰C → 10.00 hrs
Full ⁰C/hr → 530 ⁰C → Pass
10 ⁰C/hr → 520 ⁰C → 11.00 hrs
10 ⁰C/hr → 300 ⁰C → Pass
20 ⁰C/hr → 100 ⁰C → Pass
End

The kiln was set on 29/01/10 I will post an image of how the piece comes out when the program is complete.

Carrying On

I starter on a piece last semester and I wasn't able to completely finish it in time for hand in so this week I have spent some time on it trying to get it polished.

The piece was a lot taller but there were cracks and I didn't want them to run through the rest of the piece. I managed to get a good polish with pumice on the polishing wheel but because of the shape its going to take some time to get to a high polish. There are also some chips in the piece and a large concave area where there was a crack in the mould so the glass much have flowed out as it was cooling, I have been thinking about using the diamond wheel to smooth down these area so they look better and are easier to polish. I was intending to enter this piece to the warm glass award but the lack of technicians has meant I haven't been able to have much time in the cold work shop.

Hot Work

On the Friday afternoon I made a seconded wax of the shape in casting architectural forms, and when I was waiting for it to cool I had planned to do some polishing but no one was in to keep an eye on the cold work shop so I decided to go and do some work in the hot shop, not really aiming to make anything just wanted to practice shaping and see if I could still manage working with hot glass. I took a few gathers but didn't do any blowing because I had a cold sore, so spent a lot of time shaping and re-heating the glass. I didn't keep the piece in the end because I didn't fancy paying for it and it didn't seem very relevant to my work. But after having a chat with Simon (the hot glass technician) about my work he suggested doing hot casts of the plaster pieces I had already made. I haven't done any hot casting before so Simon said he would help me on Monday afternoon to see if I was interested in incorporating it in to my work.