Post #677691 by danlovestikis on Sun, May 12, 2013 8:05 AM

VampiressRN if we didn't have you planning the event we wouldn't have one and there wouldn't be a need for this Big Boy mug, it is you that deserves all the praise. Thank you hundreds of times for all you do.

littlegiles

Will the mold work?...not like mold number I
What happened to mold #2?...worst part it slipped
Tune in tomorrow...now it is tomorrow so I'll reveal the problems
Same Wendy time, same Dan channel...is Dan now a swear word?

hang10tiki and no re-runs

Hale Tiki way too big and way too heavy. I need GROG to make our molds.

The not so much Progress Report

I just decided to start off with the good news. This shows the inside of the mold that worked. I'll use this one for the crawl.

Now on to the horror of stupid errors through out the making of mold II.

There was one huge error on mold I. I was rasping the outer edges so that they are not sharp when I got the idea to rasp the bottom flatter. After a couple of swipes and "OH NO!" escaping my mouth I realized I was rasping an inner piece that had a bottom already poured. So I've made sure that I'll have a huge leak that will need to be plugged with clay for every pour.

There's so much that I did wrong. Dan's not responsible for the steps and planning. He's the muscle in this process. All the errors are mine.
We poured a bottom piece and when it was hard we took it off and set it aside. Wrong move. I should have left it in place so that all the sides we poured would match. But to make it lighter we took it off and used a board. So of course that made the piece we poured worthless.

Carrying on with the worthless mold II we poured one side.

Then we flipped it and poured the other side. When we flipped it the mold slipped loose of the sculpt. We got it back in place, nope that's wrong, we thought we got it back in place. After we poured the next piece we found that with the straps off it rocked. I should have thrown it out and started again but instead I made more bad decisions and tried to find the place that caused the rocking. I even cut the sculpt. Nothing worked.

So we gave up and strapped it tight with one seam open a couple of mm's and did the top again.

Here's one thing that went right. For the last piece I couldn't take off the straps. With the buckle in the way I had to build a wall on one side.

It held the plaster just fine and we got the end poured for the second time.

After opening the mold I found more damage.
When the mold side slid as we turned it over it broke this off.

Not enough mold soap so the pieces stuck. This is at the eye. Once we can pour (in a month in the sun) I'll see if it can be used in some way.

He had a hard two days so he gets to soak in a nice bath.

At the end of day two.

At the end of mold II Dan did his happy dance while mopping because we are done making molds for now. He only did this with his good knee supporting him.

For mold II we poured all of these pieces. It may be possible, with lots of snakes and lots of hand work, to pour a tiki. I will clean it up and sand and carve on this mold to see what I can do with it. Too much work to give up.

When I try this mold out I will fill every seam with clay snakes and plug it with a bit of slip rotated before pouring it full. It will be an experiment to see what comes out.

Some days are good and some are not. We were too tired the second day and should have waited until I could think clearly. So today we will start on a new project and I'll have better photos tomorrow.

Thanks for taking this bumpy ride with us, Wendy