Week 9 (Week Beginning 22/03/10)

Tell me why I don't like Mondays...

I don't really need to tell you when I can show you...

My piece decided it wanted to have a go at flying when I introduced it to the pumice wheel. I had been doing fine for most of that day on a flat felt wheel to get the flat surfaces all polished up with pumice. Some one else needed to use it so I went on the the brush wheel to polish off the curvier surface. I was going quite well until the tip got caught in the bristles and the wheel pulled it out of my hands launching it into the metal trough under the wheel breaking off the tip of the piece and scratching the piece a little too.

I was left in tears and shock for a little while. I'm really glad I have some lovely friends around to take care of me and cheer me up with chocolate. I managed to pull myself together faster than I expected I would have at the moment I felt the piece pull away from my hands and smash, it's a wounder what chocolate and a bit determination can do.

I had also decide last week that if I got this piece finished I would submit it to the international glass festival for the student prize. So at the end of last week I was preparing to get photos done and finish filling out forms, for this reason I really waned to push on and get the piece finished. After a little break me Dave and Jo had a little conference about what could be done with the piece (binning it was not an option, not that I would have done that anyway) We decide to try to follow the flow from the curves in the piece and curve off the edge by carving it down on the diamond wheel.
I couldn't get this done straight away like I would have wanted to because Simon the only one able to change the diamond wheel wheel wasn't in, so I tried to think of something else to get on with and keep positive about this piece.

Other things to get on with

I carved a plaster modle a couple of weeks ago but with all the polishing I had almost forgoten about it to I dicided that I would eventually like to get this into glass and so started cutting up all of my gelflex I could find and start soaking the plaster. Also I have a feeling over the next few week people are going to be after all the equipment they can get their hands on so I'm better off getting it done now so I can get some waxes out in the week and make some moulds to dry over the easter holidays.

When cutting up the gexflex I suspected that I wouldn't have enought  to fill my mould. I found this to be true when pouring the gelfex into the mould. As the gelflex statered to cool I tried using a stick to push the gelfex up over the bit of the mould that wasnt completlyey covered. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, when the gelflex has cooled I will pour over some plaster this will keep the shape and stiffen the mould.
On a positive note the gelfelx didn't bubble.
Also during the week I managed to get two waxes done and in moulds. 

 
While I was gelfexinging I also got a wax from my two part mould from the other week and set up some boards to make a two part mould. Not quite sure what I'll do with it yet but, I have thought about carving into the glass surface with the diamond wheel rather than making the modle and carving it first and making multiples of the one shape. If I were to carve the glass insted I could make it so every piece is a one off. I might cast this with clear glassma and have a go if I have time or I haven't come up with any better ideas to work on over the holidays. Alternitivly I could use the gaffer colours and polish like in my other pieces so that the contrast is between the the form and the shapes within the glass rather than, the contrast in the form. I don't think that the colours and the flow within the clours of the glass seem to suit the form very well. Or if I don't do any of this keep the mould cast it later and polish in my own time then sell it when I've finished university when I've finally thought about what I want to do with the piece.
Anyway back to mould making, when making this mould I found out that we wer out of HT, so insted I would need to use fiber strands. So the mixture for this mould was 4liter of Water mixed with 2.8kg of Plaster, 2.8kg of Silica and 4 spoon fulls of fiber strands. The mix filled the mould very nicely no excess, yay.

Carving

After some work on on the diamond wheel, linisher and the pumice wheel I managed to alter the piece to a form I was happy with. Originally I wanted the piece to stand with the wave underneath but when I was polishing I started looking at the piece from different angles and thought that this way suited the piece best and in a way I thought it looked a little like a butterfly wing, very pretty. The shape also looks like a wave now and the clours really add to it. I'm really proud I managed to do something with the piece even after it got broken. Some people have even said how much they prefer the way this one looks to the way it was before, they are probably being nice. I like it any way :)

Now to get it cleaned up and photographed...

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

Gel flex and Wax

After leaving the gel flex over night to cool I was able to take out the piece of plaster I had taken a mould from, the tip of the plaster had got stuck in the top of the mould bit I managed to get i tout with a small tool, I then used some araldite to glue it back together...looked as good as new.
There were some streaks in the gel flex and there was a gap where the tip of the plaster had caused some bubble but nothing that couldn't be altered after casting the wax in to the mould.
Before I started melting my wax I decided to do a displacement test to see how much glass I would need to make my piece out of glass, a friend let me borrow a billet of gaffer casting crystal because I want to do this with a billet so I can get used to casting with them so I can see the results with glass from the same company, and so I would know how much I would need to order if I wanted to use the billets. The way I did the displacement test was by pouring 1000ml of water into a measuring jug (I didn't expect I would need any more than that) then pouring the water into the gel flex mould until the water got to the top of the mould. The measurement on the jug was 600ml meaning that I would need 400ml to fill the mould (this includes the overflow) I then got a billet and put it in the 600ml of water to see how much I would need to get 400ml by getting the water level back up to 1000ml. The one billet got the water measurement up to 900ml, meaning that each billet is equal to 300ml, so I would need 1 and a third billets to fill the mould, so I will need to buy 2 billets.
Caring on to casting the wax into the mould, I chose to use a mixture of white wax and yellow wax so that after I've cast the wax it will still be able to carve out anything lumps but also if the studio gets too hot or if my hands are warm when I'm working with the wax the shape wont warp. The wax I was using was quite old and dirty so I would have to be careful when heating it because it might be dangerous for me to stir if it starts bubbling, and I dont want to get any of the dirt into my mould because it will ruin the surface. I melted the wax at around 65 degrees C and stirred it regulaly. Then when the wax had melted completely I left it a while to cool, not sure why I do this it's just something I've been told to do, so I do. When I poured the wax I did it very slowly and careflully to make sure I didn't get any dirt in the mould, when I was left with just the dirty wax at the bottom I poured it into a bowl with news paper in so I could throw it away and used some more newspaper to scrape up any bits left in the melting pot ready for the next person who uses it (because I'm nice, unlike some nasty people who leave dirty wax in the pot when they have finish, these people are bad people!). As the wax was cooling I used a spoon to break the skin on the wax and scoop some wax out to hollow the mould out a little to save some time when steaming the wax out of the mould, and get the wax to cool quicker.
When the wax had cooled I used some wax caring tools to clean out all the lumps and bumps until I was happy that it was good enough. After l cleaned the wax up I put the piece next the plaster piece to compair, the wax seems to have shrunk from the gel flex mould so I will have to do another displacement test when I have the wax cast in a mould. If I'm lucky I could save some money and I may only need 1 billet.

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"