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 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.