Post #757537 by 2n on Tue, Jan 19, 2016 2:41 PM

Thanks for the kind words.

The reason I didn't mold with the bisque piece is because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to de-mold the plaster mold off around the Vader's mask's lower "jawline" area. With Greenware, I knew it would come off even if I had to damage the piece. And the piece did have some minor breakage after the de-mold, but it was small enough that I was able to fix it. I've decided to leave the original sculpt in Bisque form, in-case I ever want to make a mold of it again.

What happened during the mold-making process was I used old clay (a little hard), instead of new, softer clay to divide the Mug into 4 sections in the wood cottle boards. Mistake #1. That left some unseen gaps in the clay and cottle board. Mistake #2, my first batch of plaster was a bit too watery. So when I pour the plaster into 1 of the 4 sections, it started leaking into the section next to it. The bottom of the cottle boards was also leaking. There was a moment of freaking out over plugging up the leaks and adding more plaster. I also had to quickly add more plaster powder to my mixture to thicken the plaster. That's seem to help. Once the plaster was dried, I removed the boards, and clean off all the disastrous plaster leaked pieces. Also had to fix up part of the sculpture. The other sections worked better once I learned to make a thicker plaster mixture.

It was truly a terrible experience! :) I almost gave up on the whole thing.