I Put My Faith in Something Unknown

Finally the mold making process begins! I have little to no idea how this process works. The first step was to remove on of Florence's arms! Gak! My face said it all, I was pretty nervous at the thought of removing a limb, but I trust my sculpture teacher knows what he's talking about...

The reason for removing the arm is that she's too complex to make a mold in one piece. She has to be separated into three parts in order for the wax, and later bronze, to be poured in without getting clogged in the thinner parts. She also needs to be separated at places that are easy to repair, and have as few connections to the body as possible.

The other arm has been separated off with thin metal, but plastic playing cards will also work. This will make it so that the rubber molds are separate, but I don't have to physically cut off her other arm, where the drapery is also complexly connected to her leg. Getting to this point took about 3 hours. Then,we let her dry among the old wine rack and beer taps...

 To be continued Thursday...

$200 later

I bought all the mold making supplies, costing a little over $200. Some things were specifically mold-use like Smooth On Rubber 121-30, and fifty pounds bags of "FGR" (which I almost always mistakenly call "FDR") that I had to drive all the way to Richmond to the warehouse location of Douglas and Sturgess to get. Other items are more common but seem strange in this application, such as a small container of Crisco shortening, a deck of cards, and not one, not two, but four one-gallon buckets.

Moldmaking is scheduled to begin next week. I'm very, very, very anxious to begin the next phase.