Things get going

We did a bunch of things over the past few days… getting a ton of glass into kilns, mould making, sand casting.

I haven’t sand casted for a long time, and I forgot how much fun it is. We mostly cast a bunch of semi-spheres for lenses to cold work and the like, we’re making sand moulds next week. 

I learned how to make a mild with a collapsible interior that is good for making forms that are hollow. The technique builds air pockets into the enclosed spaces in the mould so that they can collapse with the expansion and compression of the glass as it heats and cools. I’ve not done any moods like this before, and Courtney is just full of information on mould making techniques that I haven’t learned yet. 

So, I’ve newly learned how to hand build moulds with multiple different layers of plasters and grog and fibreglass. Mostly until now, I’ve been pouring moulds when I make them, finding that it’s faster and less messy, but I think that hand building is not so bad anymore, and it’s definitely good for keeping the thicknesses even over the whole piece, which is important. For the collapsible core mould, its a splash coat of plaster silica, a layer of plaster silica with chopped fibre mat in in, then the core is filled with scrunched fibreglass mat dipped in plaster, so that there are air pockets, then another coat of plaster silica around the whole thing.

The light was amazing.

Moulds for the kiln. I was thinking about how the habits we create change us, so, the moulds are two parts that fit together, I'm going to try using them to cold work each other, and see what happens there. Also, we're going to be doing some mirroring later on, so I think I'll mirror some of them. Crystal is pretty.... and I've not used it nearly enough.

We spent Sunday at thrift stores nearby, getting old cameras and other things with lenses to take apart and play with. The moon last night was apparently the closest to the earth that it will be in my lifetime. I am happy that it was a relatively clear night, It was completely spectacular. I stood and watched it rise over the trees for about 30 minutes.