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Now: The Molding Process

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I know it's been a month since I last posted. Wondering what we're doing? Wonder no more! It's hot, the kids are back in school, and it's project-finishing time. Today I'm going to post some photos (and maybe videos) of the casting process for Mike's last project.

When Mike gets to the end of a project, he can literally feel the exhaustion settle in, so for this project he spent time documenting the process.

Baer Bronze examines the piece for casting
The piece above has already been "tampered with," as I like to call it. Really it's just been cut up and pulled apart to make the casting process easier. Mike usually doesn't like this part, taking a knife or a saw and slicing into all his hard work. But it's worth it in the end.

Figure that needed to be "dismembered"
Here comes the blue stuff. This pretty blue goo is what makes the rubber mold. They mix it from powder and paint it on the clay. The foundry makes sure to get it into every nook and cranny. They're so good!

Painting on the blue goo
The foundry guy is hard at work. This piece is so complex. It took the foundry more than a week of driving up here, including some drying time, to get everything finished.

First coat
What amazes me is that through this process the integrity of the piece is maintained. This is the kind of job I'd be horrible at, because I'm so impatient and tend to do things halfway. Probably why I'm not an artist. Or a foundry person.

Second coat. Or third. I'm not sure. 
After the rubber is finished, the plaster is prepared.

The "lath and plaster" comes next, creating a hard shell for the mold to make it stable.
If you think of lath and plaster, that's pretty much what they're doing here. This hard piece creates a stable shell for the rubber mold, which is what they will pour the wax into.

Totally plastered. Pun intended.
The plaster has to be completely dry before they can pull all this stuff apart. This took a couple of full days, but eventually we got there. The foundry came back the next week.

Prying the plaster off.

After the plaster is pulled off, the mold comes away. The video shows Adam from the foundry doing just that. Hopefully we didn't stress him out too much. But I think all of us - the foundry, Mike, and I - were happy that it was finally over. Mike goes to check on the wax this week, and hopefully we'll get some excellent photos to put up next time.
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