Post #664011 by Hale Tiki on Mon, Jan 14, 2013 10:52 AM

Just a small update for today. My mold is dried, and I used about a gallon of the resin that I went with to produce about 60 chunks or so for the lamp. I've done them in every color I could without mixing tints. Orange, yellow, red, green, blue, purple, dark green. I'm waiting on some florescent tints to come in to get more colors, but for now, it looks like I'm stuck with those. I'm making another mold with different chunk shapes and sizes, and I'll cast those in the new colors, and mix some of my own from primary colored tints.

And here's the pile I currently have.

I'm thinking of making a rectangular or tubular lamp first, just to get the hang of arranging the chunks, before moving onto to my final design. Not sure. Well, that's all I've done today, other than cast more multicolored tikis out of the same material.

Oh, and I've got another project that I'm starting. I recently was fortunate enough to buy a Gecko Hawaiian Scorpion Bowl. I was unfortunate, however, that despite reasonable packaging, the USPS decided that the box was best transported by using it as a soccer bowl. The bowl did not make it. It kills me when tiki mugs are broken in shipment, especially hand made ones. I was heartbroken, and although the USPS will refund what I paid for it, I can't get another one.

I could glue it back together, but bits are missing, and so the gaps would show, it wouldn't be usable, and, well, it wouldn't even look nice. I see no way to have a function mug again. Some of you that know, or work with pottery may be familiar with Kintsugi. For those that aren't, it's the Japanese art of pottery/ceramic repair that uses gold sprinkled on a resin.

Although I can't afford gold, I can afford resin, and gold powder used in the casting industry, which is just a brass alloy. And so, in the next few days, I'll be attempting to reassemble the Gecko bowl. Pictures to follow.