Hard Copy

Pulling the first casting from a big mold is generally either a great day, or a terrible one, and today was great. The mother mold came apart like a dream (might have gotten away with a few less sections, but better too many than too few), and the blanket pulled off without a hitch. Almost (almost) anti-climactic.

That said, this is pretty high stakes stuff. If the something goes wrong, you could easily be left with nothing, and you don't necessarily know if something goes has gone wrong until the very end. Pulling this cast means we're officially out of danger. Even if the next cast goes completely pear shaped, and bonds with the mold, or doesn't set, or whatver, we have a hard copy. If worst comes to worst, we can cast it again.

I wouldn't want to, but I feel a lot better knowing I could.

I AM A GOLDEN GOD!

Face Coat

What this video doesn't show is us laying up layer upon layer of burlap, and some wire sky hooks, but that's what we did. Look at how methodical Amy is compared to me.

We'll see how this one comes out this week, but laying it up definitely gave me a sense of how to go forward with a real casting. In the meantime, I'm going to need to do some experiments with 1512x and chopped strand glass. The stuff we did for a face coat was disappointingly brittle, but maybe with a little bit of a glass backbone...

A warm thank you to everyone at the DCCA who made my two, back-to-back speaking engagements such a pleasure. I'd never been there before, but I found it to be a great space, filled with a generous and knowledgable crowd. Can't ask for more than that.