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)

Plaster Models

(In Week 3) After attempting to re make my shape using my rubbish gelflex mould I have chosen to make some new shapes using the band saw to cut up some chunks of plaster, like I did originally to make the shape I've been working with a lot. Going to keep with a similar shape as I'm quite fond of triangles at the moment, so at the end of last week I made a couple of plaster triangle shapes to cut more 30cm and I needed it to be 13cm deep (I tried 2 times the size but that seemed like it would be a bit too big and After attempting to remake my plaster shape by using my rubbish gelflex mould I have chosen triangles shapes out of, I tried to make them by measuring a right angle triangle that was 1.5 times as big as the original shape making it 19cm x 23cm, the hypotenuse difficult to cut on the band saw, also if I was to make it out of glass it would be too expensive just for testing). As I am not used to working with just plaster (when working with plaster, silica and HT the amount of water is measured in liter, and just working with plaster the water is measured in pint) I estimated at I would need 4 pints of water and about 2.75kg of plaster after I set up my mould and I mixed and poured in the plaster the mould collapsed, I managed to pull it back together with a little help but it there wasn't enough plaster to get up the 13cm in depth, so I tried again with the same amounts of plaster unfortunately as the last mould had spilt I didn't find out if there was enough plaster to get to the 13cm point on the inside of my mould. But fortunately this time there were no spillages.

(Now in Week 4) I have started working on cutting out some new triangular shapes and working on some organic flowing surface decoration/texture. To make the texture on the piece below I just stared carving into the plaster with ceramics and wax carving tools to give a nice organic flowing type of efect. My original idea was to make gelflex of an interesting piece of wood then amke a wax of it, pour plaster over the top to make a block to cut out on the band saw then to melt the wax out to give the imprint of the wood. I may still do this but I really like the texture I have created.