Week 4 (Week Beginning 15/02/10) Continued

Kiln Casting

At the start of week 3 I made a mould to make Sven a twin brother, but not an identical one. When I made the mould I made some space of excess glass by sitting the piece on some rolled out clay and cut around the edges to continue the shape and because the last one I did, I had to spend some time flat bedding the piece so it could be could on the glass band saw. This way I would have to do as much cold working and if I needed some glass cut off I could get it done faster. I used the same mould mix of Plaster, Silica, HT and water but I ended up having to get some more mould mixture after I had poured because I had made the walls around the mould slightly wider than I did the last time. When the mould had dried long enough so I could take away the walls I cleaned up the mould and removed the wax and clay using some tools. When I was happy the mould was clean enough I put the mould in the drying cuboard and left it there until Friday. I wanted to see if I could get more of the copper colour in the glass (without buying the Light Copper Oxide colour of the Gaffer Casting Crystal, which I am considering getting for my final piece of work) so instead of just sieving the copper oxide in I just tipped a load in (I know very technical) then brushed it around the mould to cover all the surfaces, I wanted to put some into the flowerpot reservoir I was using but I've done this before and it makes an orb of colour in the middle of the piece (not really what I wanted). Instead of doing a displacement test I took Sven and weighed him on some scales, he was about 680g. Then I weighed out 680g of glass but it didn't look like very much compared to the size of Sven, so I put and extra 100g in because I thought about hown I had needed to cold work the piece so I'd taken some weight off (not 100g but its better to have more than you need compared to not enough). When I had set every thing up, put the glass in to the flower pot and set up some pieces of kiln shelf to rest it on and put it in the kiln to cast over the weekend. But unfortunately someone must have opened it and forgot to turn it back on or I was a bit of a plum and forgot to turn it on - but I am very sure I turned it on. Anyway when I came in on Monday morning to see how the cast was going I discovered my glass set up just as I had left it (cold and un melted). So I locked the kiln and turned it on checking it repeatedly to check no one was trying to mess with my head....

Here is the kiln program I used:

100 ⁰C/hr → 550 ⁰C → Pass hrs
Full ⁰C/hr → 880 ⁰C → 11.00 hrs
(held longer to try to get rid of bubbles)
Full ⁰C/hr → 520 ⁰C → 15.00hrs
10 ⁰C/hr → 300 ⁰C → Pass
20 ⁰C/hr → 100 ⁰C → Pass
End

And here is how the piece looked when int came out the kiln:

After looking at this piece I'm starting to lean towards using coloured casting billets to get a consistent colouring throughout the piece, but I could still use copper oxide with the billets to add a bit more colour and detail to the pieces. Not sure yet though, especially as I have moved on to make my forms with a mixture of surface textures.


Gelflex Mould

In my last post I had started to develop a plaster modal with a mixture of curvy flowing surface to contrast the geometric form. I have decided that I want to see how this will look in glass so I flatted off the straight edges but hand laping the plaster against a sheet of sand blasted sheet glass and used sand paper to smooth out the curvy surface ready to make a gelflex mould of it.
When setting up my piece of plaster I sat my piece of plaster on a rolled out sheet of clay and cut around it to leave me with a bit of over flow when pouring wax after the gelflex is made and it will provide the overflow for my investment moulds. When I was waiting for the gelflex to melt I used a spray bottle to keep the plaster damp so the plaster doesn't stick to the gelflex.
The gelflex I used for this mould was my old one I had for making brothers for Sven, and after that had been melted it didn't look like i would have enough so I managed to find out an old gelflex that I had forgotten about to cut in to tiny chunks to put into the melting pot. I started heating the gelflex at 150⁰C but it was taking a long time for the gelflex to start melting even with the lid on so I turned it up to 165⁰C that seemed to work a lot better. It took around 2hrs to melt completely. When the gelfex had melted I turned off the pot and left it for just over 30mins and stirred it regularly. I think I may have poured it a little too soon there were a few bubbles rising to the surface, especially near where the point at the top of the plaster is. I usually leave gelflex to cool for around 45mins but in some of my moulds haven't picked up all the detail and there have been streaks in the gelflex, this is why I poured it earlier.
Didn't seem like too bad a mould but I'll have to wait until the mould has cooled completely so I can take the plaster out and have a look, and then I can go on to make a wax from it and see how my new form will look in glass. This wont be my final piece, it's just a test to see how the contrasting surfaces work together. I really want to see how the curves look when looking through the glass on the other side of the piece.
Also really proud because Mark our plaster technician (and a legend) commented on how beautiful the piece was *Happy Kimi*


Random Photo

Can't remember taking this photo, but I really like it...

"Hello Feet"

Week 2 (Week Beginning 01/02/10) Continued

Kiln Casting

This week I was able to take the glass I had casted the Friday before out of the kiln. When I first looked into the kiln I was very impressed with my cast, there were very few bubbles, it was very clear and I couldn't see any signs of devitrification on the surface. All the glass had flowed through the flower pot and there was a little too much, fortunately I had made the mould to accommodate for a little extra glass.
When I took the flower pot and the kiln shelves it was resting on off the mould you could see where the kiln shelf had been and that the way the glass had flowed out the mould had pushed the copper oxide out to the corners of the mould, before I put the mould in to the kiln I sievedd the copper oxide power all over the mould to get the blue copper colour all around the piece.
When I got the glass out of the mould I really liked the way the copper oxide looked like it was bleeding into the center of the glass like routes or veinesss. This has inspired the idea of combining my arcitectualll forms with organic forms and textures like glass artists Colin Ried and Sue Nixon.
and model making.
There were some lumps on the surface and they weren't all completely flat as the shape had warped when it had the gel flex mould taken of it, I may make a plaster mould next time I work with these angular shapes so I don't lose too much of the surface colour or detail. But before I could start polishing I needed to remove the overflow from the glass, my original idea was to put the piece in plaster and put the it in to the lap saw but I was worried that the corner with acute angles would chip or break off. I asked around a few people for their opinion, the solution I settled for was to flatten of one of the edges so the bottom of the piece, it needed to be flat and at a 90 so that it could be pushed through the glass band saw.
The glass wasn't completely flat after it was cut so I flat bedded where it had been cut off and the other two largest surfaces because they weren't very flat either and there were a few lumps on there too. The glass was flat bedded on a 120grit bed, then polished down the edges on the linisher so that they wouldn't be so weak or chip too. I left the smaller surfaces because I wanted to keep some of the cast surface and colour, when I flat bedded the piece I ground away a lot of colour trying to get the piece flat.
Below is an image of the piece after it was flat bedded, I left it a bit wet when I took the photo to show the colours in it and how it would look when I start to polish it some more. I need to get more practice polishing ready for when I make my piece to display at the degree show and new designers.
I am not sure what to make of this piece, I like to think of my work as art pieces but there seems to be a need for my work to also have a function rather than, just be a piece of art work, I have considered thinking of it as being a piece of lighting but I'm not sure that this is what I want for my work. I have also thought about using the shape rather than just using it in glass sculpture and thinking of how it could work in another context. I have thought about designing contemporary bathroom fitting material fitting, for example I think this would make if the shape was adjusted sligtly and hollowed out the shape would make a very modern and interesting shaped sink or bath. I have also thought about using my hot cast pieces for lighting or as small windows, I think the the hot casting process would be more fitted to working with product design because it is easier to make multiples and there isn't as much polishing needed as there is in kiln casting.


For now I have named the piece Sven, as it is my baby so it should be named not sure why but me and Miss Clark came to the conclusion that is looked Swedish. Until next time, it good bye from me and it's good bye Sven (It's late and I'm sleepy)

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.