08.27.10 The Color of...

A cloudless summer sky over Idaho. 

Blue. 

A tune, a lament, a cry.

Blues.

A true blue reader (you?) knows that music is now a constant undercurrent in the studio here.  It colors my work, brightens my life.

Five years ago the studio sound system switched from news radio to music.  The illnesses of my parents brought enough bad news into my life without corporate media adding to it.  I turned to tunes.

Then there was a late summer storm in the Gulf of Mexico that put into peril the cultural font of the music that soothes my troubled mind.  Then another.

Blue tarp blues.

It's been five years people.

There will be plenty of media hype this weekend, spinning as wildly as the storms themselves.  Ignore the amalgamated gloss, but read one person's story.  My recommendation is Jan Ramsey's blog.

Please do suggest others in the comments section. There must be millions. 

Wishing you blue skies as we sail towards autumn...

08.25.10 Chik-chik Hooray, A New Ceramic!

Yes, there's a tiny new muddy face around the place -- Chickory!  The little guy has been a side project for while now.  Barry made a plaster mold of him early this year and I've been casting and cleaning a few at a time since March.

We tried a slightly unconventional approach with this mold, using his tail as a "natural'' pour  hole rather than putting a new hole in his belly and then having to patch that every time.

That tactic, and the tight spaces between his legs (especially the front legs) presented challenges of their own, namely -- demolding.   That middle section is really tight, and as often as not I'd tear a hoof or leg off in the process.  

So I simply started removing one of the front legs separately in the mold.  That helped, but this is a very fiddly mold to work with,  unlike the similarly sized Netsky who practically stepped right out of her mold by herself.

In cleaning these little darlings up I've become glued to the Ott-Lite with the magnifying glass.

Earlier this week I finished cleaning up the first ten ponies and bisque fired them.  There will be more information about sales of these ponies in this Friday's newsletter. 

You do subscribe to the newsletter, right?  Announcements about sales come straight to your inbox as an email, very handy. Subscribe at our website, lafnbear.com, it will take just a minute.

mmmm

08.23.10 Behold the Mold, part 2

Molding tip -- placing a sheet of foil under the mass of clay allows you to reposition the in-process mold on the work surface as needed to build walls.

In our first Behold the Mold segment Barry worked on the all-important first section of the production mold for Iko.  

Legos are used to form the container walls of the mold. Additional non-hardening clay fills the corners to form a contoured wall, this saves on the amount of silicone that will be needed for this pour.  The silicone mold material is mixed then degassed in a vacuum chamber.  Pouring it in a thin stream also helps to break any remaining bubbles.

After the first piece of silicone cured, it was covered in plaster -- the white "rim" seen around the pink silicone in the photo below.  The plaster is the rigid mother mold, or supporting shell, which prevents the flexible silicone mold material from deforming.

Next, Barry flipped the mold over and removed the purple and blue clay that the model had been resting on.  Above, you can see the smear of purply blue color that remains on the creamier clay that is the "place holder" for third piece of the mold.

After the mold lines on this side are refined, Barry builds another set of "container" walls and pours the second side of the mold.

As with the first side, the second side of silicone is also covered with plaster to make the second half of the mother mold or shell. Then the final bit of clay is cleaned out from the inner section and silicone is poured in to form the final piece of this mold.

Silicone is a bit temperature sensitive, so on cooler evenings Barry sets the mold under a lamp (or in the hot box if it's really cool) and covers the curing mold with plastic wrap to help keep heat in.

Now, as Iko's mold cures, Barry begins to pencil in the mold lines for Tee-Nah!

mmmmm